THE CONDITION OF SCULPTURE, Hayward Gallery, London, 1975

Exhibition catalogue published by the Arts Council of Great Britain to accompany The Condition of Sculpture: A Selection of Recent Sculpture by Younger British and Foreign Artists, held at the Hayward Gallery, London, 29 May–13 July 1975. Introduction by William Tucker.

Softcover, offset printed throughout with black-and-white photographs and installation views. 100 pp., 18 × 23.5 cm. Plain grey-brown card wrappers with oversized black sans-serif title and spacious monochrome layouts throughout. Individual artist sections record dimensions, materials, ownership and gallery credits alongside the plates, giving the publication the double function of introduction and exhibition record.

Forty-one British and international artists are represented, including Carl Andre, Larry Bell, Michael Bolus, Garth Evans, Lloyd Gibson, Phillip King, David Nash, Paul Neagu, Richard Serra, Anthony Smart, William Tucker, Christopher Wilmarth and Jacqueline Winsor, among others. Each artist appears through a single work; Carl Andre, Richard Serra and David van de Kop were commissioned to produce new works specifically for the Hayward exhibition.

By 1975, sculpture had moved decisively beyond the autonomous object on a pedestal. Andre's works extend across the floor, Bell's glass structures alter the viewer's relationship to the surrounding room, while Serra's materially direct constructions sit alongside a younger British generation working through structure, process, repetition and the architecture of exhibition space. The Condition of Sculpture records a moment when Minimalism, Post-Minimalism and an expanding language of installation were becoming increasingly difficult to separate — before those positions had been tidily divided into art-historical categories.

The catalogue is useful precisely because it catches that argument in progress. A modest institutional publication, but an unusually concentrated record of how sculpture was being reconsidered in Britain in the mid-1970s.

Condition: Good vintage condition. General age toning and handling to wrappers, with scattered marks, light staining and edge/corner wear. Internally lightly toned with occasional handling marks; binding intact.