Shelagh Cluett: sculpture 1977 - 1980

Donald Smith was the curator for this exhibition.

In curating this exhibition my intention was to reconsider the importance of this female British sculptor and educator by focussing on a specific group work made within a five year period. My intention was to introduce this original work made at a crucial moment in this emerging artist's development and to raise more general questions about what it was to be a female artist in the UK at the end of the 1970's.

The curatorial concept was to exhibit the sculptures in a contemporary context alongside photographs of the work taken in the artist's studio around the time that the work was made, thus giving the viewer a temporal shift. The photographs were beautiful but had never been intended for exhibition and my decision to display them was part of one of the recurring themes of my curatorial practice - the presentation of archives as factual document and aesthetic artefact simultaneously.