Rebecca Warren

British artist Rebecca Warren (b.1965) gained recognition in the 1990s for her bold, and by turns grotesque and elegant, unfired clay sculptures of women. Early works sampled the output of artists including Edgar Degas (1834-1917), photographer Helmut Newton (1920-2004) and cartoonist R. Crumb (b.1943), compounding elements from their works to create new distinctive forms. Croccioni (Brunst) (2009) is a bronze pair of rotund muscular legs in heels, striding across two plinths. The title conflates the surnames of Crumb and Futurist Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916), and Warren's sculpture is likewise a comic-serious hybrid of Crumb's exaggerated characters and Boccioni's windswept marching figure Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913). Moving beyond these art-historical forebears, subsequent works further articulate the poignant potential of female presence. Bon Voyager (2023) is a life-size bronze nude on a sloping trolley, head turned in curiosity, vivid colour on her knotted bow. The anatomical waywardness of the gouged surfaces, blurred hands and melting feet give the sculpture the sense of a complex human presence in the process of forming itself.

Rebecca Warren United Kingdom, b. 1965