Eva Rothschild | Familiars

Smithson Plaza, St James's St, SW1A 1HA

Eva Rothschild, Familiars, 2023, painted bronze, glassfibre reinforced concrete and stainless steel plinth, bronze, 192 x 84 x 52 cm, 253 x 94 x 84 cm (with plinth) (Credit: Michael Brzezinski)

Encounter is pleased to announce the outdoor installation of a new bronze sculpture by Irish artist Eva Rothschild (born 1971, Dublin), located at Smithson Plaza in St. James, London, in collaboration with Modern Art.

Familiars is part of a new series in bronze which explores Rothschild’s interest in form, materiality and the hovering between abstraction and figuration. The sculpture possesses an indeterminate, shimmering quality, in contrast to her signature hard- edge black forms that sharply determine the space around them. Human-scale and painted in pastel hues, it carries a fresh vulnerability: in spite of its material, its unexpectedly soft and pensive nature invites a closer, more direct encounter with the body than their predecessors might have.

Over the last twenty-five years, Eva Rothschild’s sculptural practice has included both intimate exhibitions and large-scale public projects across Europe and the United States. Underpinned by the legacy of modernist sculpture – notably the work of Barbara Hepworth, Constantin Brâncuși, and Eva Hesse - and the enduring forms of classical architecture, Rothschild’s visual vocabulary also engages with the haphazard and aggressive realities of the contemporary built environment. Working with both traditional and new materials, including bronze, ceramic, polystyrene, Jesmonite and Perspex, she refers to her practice as ‘expansive’. Rothschild's sculptures are often episodic – her lexicon includes: totemic stacks, interlocking triangles, striped linear forms and block work partitions. Rothschild’s work is frequently presented as accumulated objects rather than singular solid form sculptures. Understanding how objects acquire power, and perhaps even magical or spiritual meaning through the transcendent power of looking is central to her sculptural practice.

Eva Rothschild RA (born 1971) is an Irish artist based in London.

Eva Rothschild

Eva Rothschild (b.1971) was born in Dublin, Ireland. She received a BA in Fine Art from the University of Ulster, Belfast (1990–93), and an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London (1997–99). Her work is predominantly sculptural and she works across a range of materials including aluminium, jesmonite, leather, fabric and perspex. She has a materials based studio practice but also works on major public and outdoor commissions. Her work references the art movements of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Minimalism and is also informed by the contemporary aesthetics of protest and spirituality. In 2014 she was elected Royal Academician.

Rothschild's work has been the subject of institutional solo exhibitions including Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2018), Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane (2014), Nasher Sculpture Center (2012), The Hepworth Wakefield (2011), South London Gallery (2007), and Kunsthalle Zürich (2004). In 2009 she was awarded the Tate Britain annual Duveens' Commission, for which she produced Cold Corners, a vast rambling geometric sculpture that occupied the length of the neo-classical galleries.

Rothschild's works are held by major public collections including MoMA, New York, Arts Council of England, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Tate, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

In 2019, she represented Ireland at the 58th Venice Biennale.