Olivia Louvel: The Sculptor Speaks

The Sculptor Speaks is an audio-visual installation by Olivia Louvel, played at The Hepworth Wakefield in October 2021 as part of a series of responses to its 10th anniversary exhibition, Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life. Louvel created the piece based around a 1961 recording of Barbara Hepworth’s voice. Louvel conceives the sound work as a direct carving into the original recorded material to produce an abstract form. The sound work is accompanied by projected imagery drawing from Hepworth’s sculptural relationship to the landscape of Cornwall. Emerging from the seascape, a geometric line is being slowly drawn, completing a full meditative cycle.