Artist: Eva Rothschild

Modern Art presents an exhibition by Eva Rothschild. This is Rothschild’s seventh solo exhibition with the gallery.

Rothschild’s sculpture comes about through accumulation, both as modular units of lattices and blocks and by the massing or stacking of cast objects. This intentional seriality is explored in Tribute, installed in the first gallery. Belonging to a family of loosely pyramidical works; Amphi, Venice Biennale (2019) and Parsloes Memphis, Dagenham (2022-present), Tribute posits a form that can expand exponentially. The elements are made from steel rebar rod and cast concrete, the open structure landing somewhere between abandoned playground and emerging architecture. Her visual vocabulary nods to enduring forms of classical architecture whilst also engaging with the haphazard and aggressive realities of the built environment. They can be approached as contemporary ruins, reflecting on the human traces within the monumental.

The large-scale installation in the second gallery, Drift, was first shown at the Irish Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale. It directly engages with the detritus of consumer objects that accumulate around these historic sites. Cans and hexagonal prisms pile up against a wall of concrete blocks, forming a barrier across the room. Both sculptures speak to the effects of coercive and monumental architecture, exploring how objects acquire power and how that power may be co-opted by the individual. Rothschild works with both traditional and new materials, such as bronze, gesso, rebar, plaster and concrete. For Hollow Moon, one of two new bronze sculptures, Rothschild carves stacked head-like forms from polystyrene before transposing them into metal. This transformation has a haptic effect as the crumbling texture of the ‘disposable’ material is permanently set. She further subverts use value of materials in Plateau where the rebar we have encountered as a structure in Tribute, is twisted and squashed into an organic tangled mess without any possibility of regaining function.

Eva Rothschild was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1971. She lives and works in London. She received her BFA in 1993 from the University of Ulster, Belfast, and her MFA in 1999 from Goldsmiths College, London. She was elected to the Royal Academy in 2014, where she is currently Professor of Sculpture. Rothschild has mounted solo exhibitions at Modern Art, London (2022); the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2018); the Nasher Sculpture Centre, Dallas (2012); the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2012); Kunstverein Hannover, Hanover (2011); Public Art Fund, New York (2011); and Kunsthalle Zürich (2004). In 2009, she became the sixth artist to be awarded the prestigious Duveens Commission at Tate Britain, London. Her 2011 solo Hot Touch was the inaugural exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield. In 2019, she represented Ireland at the 58th Venice Biennale. Rothschild’s works are held in public collections including the Arts Council Collection, London; the Columbus Museum of Art; the Dallas Museum of Art; MoMA, New York; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; Tate, London; the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Public sculptures in London by Rothschild can be seen in Smithson Plaza, St James’s; Kings Cross, Coal Drops Yard; and The Line, Bow. In 2026, she will be the subject of a solo exhibition at Fruitmarket, Edinburgh.