Sheila Hicks has pioneered the use of fibre as a sculptural material for over 70 years. This book, published to accompany the exhibition Sheila Hicks: Off Grid at The Hepworth Wakefield, celebrates a lifelong exploration of colour, form and texture. It takes on a generous format, reflecting the monumental, room-filling scale of Hicks's works exhibited at the galleries. The careful proportion of the images echoes the artist’s sensitivity to space and the relationship to the architecture that houses her artworks.
The richly pigmented cover cloth is cut flush on the edges, revealing the threads of construction over time. The bold custom typography is screenprinted to the cloth’s surface so that it appears to weave into the material. Tall, narrow inserts are used for the chapter dividers where text runs along the warp lines; each is annotated by a small sketch from Hicks's extensive archive of notebooks. Within these chapters, texts are set in a single column that spans the full height of the page – echoing the form of the artist’s floor-to-ceiling artworks – interwoven with imagery and notations that move off the grid to create unexpected textural interventions.
This is further explored in the book through an interview between Hicks and David Chipperfield, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect of The Hepworth Wakefield.
The accompanying tote bag can be purchased on the APFEL Shop.
