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Dependent Rational Animals

Dependent Rational Animals, made in collaboration with Sally Underwood, was a 2,300 square metre installation of sculpture, painting and wall drawings.

Incorporating 38 works, the exhibition explored ways in which sculpture and painting can interrelate in ways that are productive for the audience. Large watercolour wall drawings became a backdrop for a towering timber-framed sculpture shingled with leather, and a nine-sided igloo constructed from wood and wool. Within these soft shelters, smaller paintings could be looked at secretly and slowly, away from the openness of the gallery.

The exhibition explored how sculpture can make space for painting and how paintings hold the interior of a sculpture. The concept draws on unusual displays of paintings like those in the Sir John Soane Museum, where works are mounted on moveable panels. The title of the exhibition derives from a book by Alasdair MacIntyre that explores the virtues of dependency.

Walsh and Underwood met at Braziers International Artists’ Workshop in 2006 and have collaborated since 2011. Two exhibitions in 2012 – IGLOO at Globe Gallery in Newcastle and at NN Northampton, funded by ACE, allowed their ideas to be developed.

The project builds on Walsh’s previous research Site Specific painting in England and Italy (AHRB / Abbey Fellowship / British School at Rome 2000) and – via the catalogue - Infallible, In Search of the Real George Eliot, Aspects of Fiction in Contemporary Art (Arts Council / AHRB 2003 - 5).