Introduction to Sagarika Sundaram: Reservoir Audio guide

Stop 1.

Hello and welcome to the introduction to Reservoir, an exhibition by artist Sagarika Sundaram.

My name is Laurence Sillars, Head of the Henry Moore Institute and curator of this exhibition.

Reservoir explores the sculptural possibilities of wool and felt in monumental, immersive and colourful ways. The exhibition brings together an entirely new body of work by Sundaram. All the works in Reservoir have been produced in Kutch, north-west India, where Sundaram has developed her research into felt and dyeing techniques over the last few months. Born in Kolkata in 1986, Sundaram lives and works in New York.

There are five audio stops, including this introduction. In the following stops, you will hear the artist’s voice describing and discussing four of the works in the exhibition.

In the first room, you will find the monumental sculpture Blue Mountain at the centre of the gallery. The work’s expansive, undulating forms create cave-like spaces that you can move around and almost within. There is one audio stop for Blue Mountain.

In the second room, you will encounter Dancer, which spirals from floor to ceiling almost like an orange peel. You will also find a work called Rope. The sculpture explores one of humanity’s oldest functional materials. There are two audio stops covering these works.

The third room is occupied by a work called Glossolalia, an organic, colourful form with wild, floral shapes. There is one audio stop, which is the final stop.

At each stop, you can access the audio guide either by pressing the corresponding number on the audio player, or by scanning the QR code on the artwork label with your phone.

Large-print versions of the wall text, artwork labels and exhibition guide are available at the gallery entrance. A Braille version of the wall text and artwork labels is also available.

If you would like to use a folding seat, you can find one next to the welcome desk.

Members of staff wearing blue or light green tops are in the galleries at all times.

Please let them know if you need any assistance.

End of Stop 1.

Stop 2. Blue Mountain

As you step inside the first gallery, you will find the largest work in the exhibition towering over you: Blue Mountain. Its highest point rises just ahead of you, slightly to the right, and the sculpture stretches several metres out to either side.

It’s made of felted wool and tie-dyed by hand to create contrast between natural greys and deep, layered shades of indigo blue. Walk around it. Experience how the surface curves in and out – convex, then concave. it might start to feel like stepping into a cave.

In the following audio, you’ll hear artist Sagarika Sundaram describe Blue Mountain, its textures and colours, and how she hopes we might experience the work through our bodies and memories.

Sagarika Sundaram: One work in the show is called Blue Mountain. It’s about 10 feet high, which is about three metres, and it’s about 24 feet long, which is about seven metres long. And it’s in the centre of the room. It’s a work that people can walk around. It curves in two different ways. And with this work, I’m really kind of exploring the idea of clothness, which is, for me, the way that cloth hangs and drapes with its own weight. And so the work curves and opens up, but it also folds and curls in and creates these two cavities that the viewer can walk into.

While I create form, I’m also creating voids, so that relationship between positive and negative space and what colour brings to it. And then when you’re standing in front of something that is bigger than you, that envelops you, I think that creates a sense of presence, and I think that’s really what I’m after with the work.

The blue in the work moves across the work in a very elemental fashion. The work is black and white, so the brown and white wools that I, that I love working with and creates a very toothy texture, very organic. I think of it like an elephant’s knee, so like a wrinkle, a very leathery wrinkle, like a pebbly surface. And then when it takes on this blue colour, it creates a lot of depth, and I’m trying to create something immersive and elemental with this work.

So the other day, I had Blue Mountain laid out on my table, and somebody walked by the work, and she had a very interesting response to it. She said it reminded her of a mountain in Kutch, and this mountain has a very strong magnetic charge. So if you drive up the mountain, at some point your car stalls because all your controls fail, and the magnetic charge of the mountain takes over.

And it was such an interesting response to me because this work has this very pebbly texture. It looks organic. It looks like stone. It’s also soft. And I just found that, you know, what she was describing was something that she could feel in her body and a very strong memory of this that she had. And I think that’s what I’m trying to hope that the final work in its final form generates, movement in the physical sense in the viewer that pulls from an old memory and that they can feel in their body.

End of Stop 2.

Stop 3. Rope

In Gallery 2, you will also find Rope – a colourful woollen sculpture, about as thick as an adult’s loose hug. It rests directly on the floor, one end folded over itself to create a lift in the work.

It’s made of thousands of threads, laboriously spun, dyed and twisted together by hand. Approach the sculpture and pay particular attention to its ends, where you can see the full intricacy and colour variation of the hand-dyed strands in reds, yellows, blues, as well as the natural greys and browns.

In the following audio, artist Sagarika Sundaram describes her interest in rope as a form of textile technology and explores the simple processes of twisting and tension that give it strength.

Sagarika Sundaram: Another work in the show is called Rope and it’s literally a rope and I’ve really been dreaming of making a rope for the longest time. I think about construction a lot when I make my work and I think that’s what at, is at the heart of textiles. It’s construction. You’re thinking about the way in which the cloth is constructed literally. And so all of these tools around us that are made of cloth, including rope, I see as technology. You know, felt for me is a kind of technology. These constructions have not changed over millennia and when a thing has not had to change over so long, like the wheel, I think it’s quite perfect and in its simplicity.

So the way felt only needs three forces, water, soap and friction to form a cloth. The same way rope needs tension and twisting to create, you know, this very strong interlocked linear form that I have really been excited to recreate. And so I’ve been researching medieval rope making techniques which date to, you know, Egyptian times and even like older, you know. Rope is such an elemental, basic part of human civilisation. It’s something humans figured out very early on from natural fibres. So rope in this work you could say is an homage to that, the rope as technology, textile as technology.

End of Stop 3.

Stop 4. Dancer

In Gallery 2, hanging from the ceiling, almost touching the floor, is a large spiral of felt – titled Dancer. It spins gently, just off-centre in the room.

Dancer was created from a single cut through one large, thick rectangle of felt and it evokes natural forms – an orange peel, a shell or some other organic growth pattern. Move closer and you’ll see its intricate, handmade qualities: complex patterns of brown, off-white and red running through the felted wool on the outside and inside of the spiral.

Listen to the artist Sagarika Sundaram as she describes the form of Dancer and the everyday movements and gestures that inspired her.

Sagarika Sundaram: This is a spiral form that, you know, either you can think of it as curling downwards or curling upwards. It’s a form that I’ve been working on for a few years right now. What I love about it is that it’s one cloth and one cut, and that creates this almost like an orange peel form that again, the viewer can go around. And then there’s space and there’s, you know, there’s the actual cloth that takes space, but then there’s the negative space and the relationship between the two creates certain tension that I’m very interested in.

My childhood, I spent as much time in India as I did outside of India. So I grew up both as an insider and outsider, and one of the things that I just love being around is, you know, the ways in which things are done by hand here. So something like, you know, as simple as on the street, you know, somebody cutting open a tender coconut, you know, with a machete or somebody preparing a mango with chilli powder and salt or a sliced guava.

I find the way in which the hand moves here so inspiring, so fluid, so artful, the gesture, the style and the flare they bring to each plate of food that they present. It’s something that I used to, you know, my father always used to make me stop on the street and say, “Oh look, let’s watch how that thing is being made.” or, “Let’s talk to that uncle and see how it’s being made.” And it always used to embarrass me, but I think those are the moments that have stayed with me being in wonder and being in awe and in, you know, taking joy in these, just observing the world around me.

End of Stop 4.

Stop 5. Glossolalia

In the final gallery you encounter a single sculpture: the deep, slightly sulphurous, vibrant yellow Glossolalia, evoking a flower or a sea creature.

Metal armatures give this sculpture its three-dimensional, octopus-like form, with arms held outstretched in the space. From each arm hang hundreds of tendrils of wool and occasionally silk, further evoking movement.

In the following audio, artist Sagarika Sundaram describes the form of Glossolalia and the process of making her work which involves folding, tying and dyeing the felt.

Sagarika Sundaram: Another work that I’m making for this show is a quite wild floral-looking creatures. It’s called Glossolalia. The title of the work refers to speaking in tongues and when I look at these forms, which are very organic, floral, but not pretty enough to be really flowers. They’re sort of menacing at the same time. I think of something, you know, like it’s very active and alive and almost speaking in its own language.

And I’m thinking about movement and space. There are lots of tassels hanging and gravity that bring line and direction to the way the work, you know, the limbs of the work, when they curl, they hang with a fringe and draw the eye in a certain way.

So what I do is first I fold, I tie, I dye and then I open up. And then I fold again, I tie again, dye another colour and then open up. And then I do this again. And that relationship between control and risk and chance is very exciting to me. When you open it up, it’s so exciting. Everybody’s dying to see the way in which colour has moved across the cloth. And then when I cut in multiple places, and then I hang it up, and then either folds work with gravity or against gravity. So understanding all of that happens only at the very end. So that moment, I won’t say it’s a surprise, but it’s a moment that I anticipate. There’s a lot of bated breath. My heart is in my mouth because I’ve faithfully followed a methodical way of working that has also been very playful and inspired and, you know, sort of me moving without even thinking or being conscious of my own body. So seeing that all come together is very exciting.

End of Stop 5.