Most sculptors get a bit twitchy when their work is treated as a climbing frame—but not Conrad Shawcross. At Saturday’s unveiling of Three Perpetual Chords, his sculpture co-commissioned by Southwark Council and the CAS to replace and honour the Barbara Hepworth sculpture stolen in 2011 from Dulwich Park, he revealed that, although the three-part piece is based on a visual description of musical chords, children sticking their heads through the holes in the original Hepworth also formed a major inspiration. “Children make play out of everything—and I want this work to be the opposite of traditional civic sculpture: if there’s 20 people on it—that’s great!”
Speakingon the same day as a tourist was helicoptered to hospital after taking a tumblefrom one of Landseer’s lions in Trafalgar Square, Shawcross was nonethelessadamant that the more “unpredictable things” that take place on his threeknot-like, cast iron sculptures the better: “I want people to picnic on it, siton it—even hang your washing on it!” Certainly the youth of South London weretaking him at his word, swinging, clambering and balancing on the loops of castiron, even as the musicians of the London Contemporary Orchestra were playingMira Calix’s specially composed response to each piece. Whether any washinggets pegged out remains to be seen.