Modern Love
Eva Rothschild

Eva Roth­schild is a sculp­tor. Cen­tral to her work is in-depth mate­r­i­al exper­i­men­ta­tion in the stu­dio, and her work exists on every scale from the inti­mate to the mon­u­men­tal. Her work ref­er­ences his­to­ry, such as the art move­ments of the 1960s and 1970s and the ancient world but is also informed by con­tem­po­rary aes­thet­ics. For exam­ple, the ​‘love lock’ tra­di­tion that gained noto­ri­ety on Paris’s Pont des Arts, where cou­ples attach pad­locks to bridges as a sym­bol of their love. This device fea­tures in Mod­ern Love, along with works made with a vast array of both tra­di­tion­al and new mate­ri­als, includ­ing bronze, resin plas­ter, ceram­ic, rub­ber, steel, con­crete, and paint.

Trib­ute (2024) emerged from exper­i­ments with cast­ing con­crete around steel rebar squares, ini­tial­ly flat but nat­u­ral­ly pro­gress­ing to three-dimen­sion­al forms. Mod­u­lar­i­ty is a con­sis­tent inter­est that runs through­out Eva’s prac­tice, with sculp­tures that accu­mu­late rather than exist as sin­gu­lar, com­plete enti­ties. This sculp­ture was informed by a play­ground Roth­schild made in east Lon­don and the famil­iar geom­e­try of the pyra­mids — forms both fun­da­men­tal and mys­ti­cal, his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant yet often aban­doned. Eva’s work draws par­al­lels between con­tem­po­rary struc­tures and ancient ruins, evok­ing a sense of the incom­plete or the for­got­ten, of archi­tec­ture that has moved beyond use. The works sug­gest a pos­si­bil­i­ty for addi­tion or sub­trac­tion. They are episod­ic and open-end­ed sug­gest­ing that change is always possible. 

The cast­ing and accu­mu­la­tion of every­day objects such as bot­tles, cans and rolls of tape take a New Roman­tic turn in Heart­break­er (2025) where cast rub­ber pad­locks coa­lesce around a sup­port. Whol­ly con­struct­ed of these recent­ly sym­bol­ic objects, the mass of indi­vid­ual locks both forms and obscures an almost-head, cre­at­ing a ten­sion between the con­struc­tion and the era­sure of the form. 

Like the infi­nite scal­a­bil­i­ty of the mod­u­lar works, Madon­na (2024) explores the idea of a con­tin­u­ous line that has the poten­tial to extend indef­i­nite­ly. The work orig­i­nates from exper­i­ments with cor­ru­gat­ed card, ini­tial­ly used to mim­ic large clas­si­cal columns before evolv­ing into slim­mer, more ges­tur­al forms. In Madon­na, the line defines space in a way that is both flu­id and dis­rupt­ed, wrap­ping around itself in a man­ner that evokes the moth­er-and-child rela­tion­ship found in clas­si­cal sculp­ture. The den­si­ty of the cor­ru­ga­tion with­in the line cre­ates a visu­al com­plex­i­ty, com­pelling the eye to fol­low with­out ever find­ing clo­sure. These lines do not loop, mean­ing they nev­er tru­ly end. The colour sub­verts tra­di­tion­al expec­ta­tions of sculp­ture with a soft­ness that con­trasts its struc­tur­al rigor.

Influ­enced by the recent com­mis­sion of two enor­mous tapes­tries for Sadler’s Wells East in Lon­don, Tapes­try (2024) rein­ter­prets tra­di­tion­al weav­ing on an entire­ly dif­fer­ent scale, using uncon­ven­tion­al mate­ri­als that chal­lenge expec­ta­tions. While soft fibres typ­i­cal­ly define tapes­try, Eva sought a more sub­stan­tial alter­na­tive, turn­ing to steel grids and extrud­ed rub­ber as a ready­made warp and weft to trans­form an indus­tri­al frame­work into woven sculpture.

Pio­neers (2024) is locat­ed with­in a series — an anti-stat­ue, or a no-face stat­ue, where heads exist with­out bod­ies. This absence chal­lenges tra­di­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions of per­son­hood, offer­ing an ambigu­ous yet com­pelling pres­ence. The inher­ent ten­sion in these forms, the sense that they could top­ple at any moment, embod­ies the dynam­ic essence of sculp­ture. Unlike con­ven­tion­al ceram­ics, the pieces are con­struct­ed by fold­ing and wrap­ping around emp­ty space rather than being carved or mod­elled. This method draws a par­al­lel to Tapes­try, where a sin­gle line cre­ates an entire sur­face. As the first of its kind made in ceram­ic, Pio­neers evokes the fragili­ty of wrapped heads — forms that appear as though they could unrav­el at any moment.

Rain­bow (2024) explores the chal­lenge of using a uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­niz­able sym­bol that is deeply embed­ded with cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal mean­ings. While the desire to cre­ate a rain­bow feels sim­ple and ordi­nary, its asso­ci­a­tions make it dif­fi­cult to present as a neu­tral or emp­ty form. The work acquires the qual­i­ties of an archa­ic urban struc­ture, evok­ing both nos­tal­gia and grandios­i­ty — ideas that res­onate through­out the entire exhibition.

Intro­vert (2024) is one of sev­er­al works in a series that chal­lenge the inher­ent nature of mate­ri­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly steel rebar. The process and result­ing work is para­dox­i­cal: a rigid, struc­tur­al mate­r­i­al is trans­formed into some­thing light, tan­gled and seem­ing­ly mal­leable. The works can be placed at any height or ori­en­ta­tion and hov­er on the edge of organ­ised chaos. 

Through­out the exhi­bi­tion, this sense of mate­r­i­al con­fu­sion recurs: ceram­ics appear like bronze, while steel los­es its usu­al order and strength. These works seduce us into the world of mate­ri­als, their pres­ence in the world, often over­looked in con­tem­po­rary life.