Cell : Cella : Celda

This exhibition brings together four mid-career European artists to create new works at the Henry Moore Institute.

Cell : Cella : Celda brings together the artists Edward Allington, Vittorio Messina, Jaume Plensa and Andrew Sabin, who have each achieved considerable success both in their own countries and internationally, and show great promise for the future.

Although apparently separated by geography, language, history and tradition, each of the artists in this exhibition have been selected for their individual approach to art making which involves an interest in the past. The exhibition title takes the elemental word cell and its Italian and Spanish counterparts to indicate a linguistic connection between the four artists that can be explored through the layered sediment of the history of culture.

“No attempt has been made to create a group, or to suggest a common strategy – artistic, political or otherwise. Nevertheless, each artist, I believe, does recognise the latent energy of memory which is contained within their thoroughly contemporary work.”

Robert Hopper, Director of The Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, 1993

In art, as with words, each generation will discover its own meaning in what has been inherited. Cell : Cella : Celda suggests that it is via such archaeological effort of the mind within an individual and collective memory that a passage to the future of art may be identified.