Echo

Narrator: This work is titled Echo. This piece was a breakthrough for the artist Kim Lim, as she began to explore structures which contain negative space. What is negative space? To understand, try this. Hold your arms out in front of you and curve your arms until your fingertips touch. You've created a circle with your arms and body. But what is inside this circle? Would you say nothing? Or air? Can space erode or invade form? For Lim, this was the very question of negative space she was trying to answer. Echo is 77 centimetres tall and 80 centimetres in diameter. It has the shape of a low, round stool, or a small barrel, but it has no top. On two sides, you’ll find symmetrical rounded cutouts that look like semicircles. So, when you look at Echo, it is open and hollow. Here’s Joleen Loh, co-curator of the exhibition. Joleen Loh: With Echo, Lim wanted to create a structure that could contain space within it and negate that space at the same time. It was important for her to indicate negative volume without using mass and bulk. The flat surface of the exterior emphasises the work’s shell-like quality. This is one of the earliest sculptures wherein Lim deliberately explored the notions of negative space. Also, during this time, she was experimenting with the form and presentation of her art. Her goal was to create, as she said, an “unfussy statement of form” where, in her words, “there is no illusionism or other trickery in it. Walking around [the sculptures] will provide an explanation rather than a discovery.” Narrator: Echo is made of stainless steel, which is painted with shiny enamel paint. The exterior is brown. Its inside is a bright reddish orange. Joleen Loh: Kim Lim’s use of primary colours and Echo’s shape show her early experimentation in artmaking. In 1962, Lim moved away from traditional ways of making sculpture and made a new body of work using industrial materials like the stainless steel and sprayed paint in Echo. Echo’s vibrant colours and smooth finish align with a new stylistic turn towards minimalism in Britain. Artists known for this style in Britain were called the “New Generation” sculptors.