When Forms Come Alive, Hayward Gallery, review

Attending this exhibition, presented by the Hayward Gallery, without knowing what to expect, I was blown away by the overall presentation of each installation. Each piece is placed and worked into its space with sheer perfection. The overall feel of the exhibition was one of playfulness and wonderment, as I tried to figure out the materials used, whether a piece was static or mobile, recognising shapes, and understanding how they relate to our world and us.

When Forms Come Alive highlights ways in which artists have embraced ideas of movement, flux, poetic transformation and organic growth and how nothing stays the same.

Installation view of Eva Fàbregas, When Forms Come Alive (7 February — 6 May 2024). Photo_ Jo Underhill. Courtesy the Hayward Gallery.

The works span over 60 years of contemporary art and features 21 International Artists, namely Ruth Asawa, Nairy Baghramian, Phyllida Barlow, Lynda Benglis, Michel Blazy, Paloma Bosquê, Olaf Brzeski, Choi Jeonghwa, Tara Donovan,DRIFT, Eva Fàbregas, Holly Hendry, EJ Hill, Marguerite Humeau. Jean-Luc Moulène, Senga Nengudi, Ernesto Neto, Martin Puryear, Matthew Ronay, Teresa Solar Abboud and Franz West.

As recommended I started in the Project Space with Pumping, 2019 (Eva Fabregas) which I immediately recognise as distinctly intestinal and appears to be unravelling and filling the entirety of the room. Or as Ralph Ruggof, Director and Curator humorously described, an “Intestinal Disco” as it is accompanied by a bass heavy soundtrack inspired by the artists experience of sound tracks in nightclubs.

Shylight, 2006-2014  by DRIFT is a performative sculpture suspended from the ceiling that performs a kind of dance of descending and ascending lights programmed to open and close like flowers. By looking up one experiences a relaxing dance of sorts and by looking down you have a starburst pattern reflected on to the floor. An almost two in one piece of art.

Installation view of Studio DRIFT, Michel Blazy and Olaf Brzeski, When Forms Come Alive (7 February — 6 May 2024). Photo by Jo Underhill. Courtesy the Hayward Gallery.

In the same area is Bouquet Final, 2012 by Michel Blazy contrasting the movement of Shylight one imagines this piece to be static but on closer inspection one realises the installation is in constant flux. Bouquet Final’s wall of foam constantly grows, curves, flows and mutates and eventually disintegrates almost imperceptibly. The way in which the foam spills from the wall of tubs attached to scaffolding means the shapes will constantly change and each visitor essentially sees a different sculpture.

Installation view of Matthew Ronay, When Forms Come Alive (7 February — 6 May 2024). Photo by Jo Underhill. Courtesy the Hayward Gallery.

Matthew Ronay’s colourful painted wooden sculptures draw on biological and botanical references and thought provokingly stated “I started to realise that all these things that you think you invented nature thought of them first. Beautiful textures and colours and divine geometry – just real brilliance of pattern, humour, theatre and a way in which nature embodies thoughts.”

Tara Donovan, Untitled (Mylar), 2011 - 2018. Mylar and hot glue. Dimensions Variable. Installation view, MCA Denver. Photo by Christopher Burke. Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery.

Tara Donovan’s Untitled (Mylar) 2011 is the poster child of the exhibit and the sheer scale of the piece and how it inhabits the space is impactful. Tara Donovan makes her sculpture from manufactured materials that are often a part of consumers’ everyday lives but she finds her primary inspiration in nature. Untitled (Mylar) is created from thousands of flat, reflective discs of Mylar (a metallic polyester film), which have been folded, hot-glued and massed into spheres of varying sizes. Together they form a gigantic agglomeration that appears to mimic the growth patterns of biological or molecular structures. Light  is also an element which generates kaleidoscopic perceptual shifts of reflectivity as the viewer moves around the installation.

A Subsequent Offering, 2017 by EJ Hill is a room with an easily recognisable neon roller coaster. For the first presentation of this work Hill lay on the platform at the centre of the installation, all day, every day, inserting his own imobile body into the scene. As a subsequent offering, this sculpture is what Hill describes as a ‘performance relic’, but one that invites us all to think about the nature of collective experience.

‘Thinking about roller coasters is one way for me to communicate ideas that I have about struggle and mortality and the impulse to go higher and faster and test our physical and mental limits.’ EJ Hill.

There is of course a nudge to simply think of the simple cliché  “Life is just a roller coaster”.

Installation view of EJ Hill, When Forms Come Alive (7 February — 6 May 2024). Photo by Jo Underhill. Courtesy the Hayward Gallery.jpg

The sight specific piece Sottobosco 2024 by Holly Hendry sits in the window of the upper galleries with a clever use industrial materials to orchestrate a scene on the window’s outer ledge, serpentine metal ducting, painted green to suggest the colour of lichen, seems to worm its way from outside in as if seeping through a porous membrane. Lichen is one of the oldest life forms on the planet, and is often the first to appear in harsh new environments including Brutalist buildings like the Hayward Gallery.

Holly Hendry and Ernesto Neto, When Forms Come Alive. Photo by Natascha Milsom.

Adjacent is Iaia Kui Dau Arã Naia, 2021, Ernesto Neto’s signature crochet sculptures with drops of dangling pods reminding us of a jungle canopy or a spider’s web which is beautifully juxtaposed with Sottobosco.

Each room feels like a new adventure worth exploring, challenging your ideas of how the art in front of you can be perceived. The exhibition brims with colour, humour and life and is a must see. When Forms Come Alive is an exceptional exhibition.

To accompany the exhibition is an excellent public programme of talks, discussions and tours.

Date: 7 February - 6 May 2024. Time: From 10 am daily. Location: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, South Bank, London SE1 8XX. Price: £18. Concessions available. Book now.

Words by Natascha Milsom