In her sculptures and works on paper defined by their simple, Minimalist aesthetic, Singaporean-British artist Kim Lim explored line, colour, and form, as well as the relationship between the mediums of sculpture and printmaking.
Read MoreBorn in Singapore and raised largely between Penang and Malacca, Kim Lim moved to London in the 1950s to pursue studies in wood-carving and printmaking at Central Saint Martins and the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1958, in a ceramics class run by Helen Hatori, she met the renowned Scottish sculptor William Turnbull. They would later marry.
Lim's work from this period reflects an interest in European Modernist sculpture. The pair of stone heads in Kiss (1959), for example, evokes Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși's two embracing figures in The Kiss (1916). Lim also often made historical references in her titles, as can be seen in Sphinx (1959)—composed of abstract wooden and metal parts that together recall the feline hybrid—and the bronze Samurai I (1960).
Throughout her career, Kim Lim developed her prints and sculptures together, exploring similar motifs in both mediums. The star-like shapes in Small Etching (1969) or Ring (1970) echo the four fibreglass sculptures that make up Trengannu III (1967), while the rigidly geometric forms of the 'Ladder' series (1972) can be glimpsed in the painted wood structures in 'Intervals' (1973).
In the 1980s, Kim Lim began to increasingly draw from natural forms as well as the visual languages of the ancient civilisations of places like Greece and China. Caryatid (1985) or Caryatid II (1987) consists of two stone cubes stack above and below a column marked by simple, slightly curved lines that suggest movement. Similar lines evoke water or wind in Dua Huang (1988)—a lithograph depicting waves of blue and beige—or rain in the blue B (1995).
Lim held her first retrospective exhibition at the Roundhouse Gallery, London, in 1979, and presented her work at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1995, but her practice has been slow to gain major international attention. In 2018, STPI organised Kim Lim: Sculpting Light, the first major solo exhibition of Lim's works on paper and sculptures in Singapore. Kim Lim: Carving and Printing at London's Tate Britain (2020) also provided a rare opportunity for an overview of earlier works produced between 1958 and 1974.
Kim Lim, S|2 Gallery, London (2018); Kim Lim: Carvings, News Art Centre, Salisbury, United Kingdom (2014); Kim Lim: A Tribute Exhibition, Singapore Art Museum (1999).
Breaking The Mould: Sculpture by Women Since 1945, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2020); Minimalism: Space. Light. Object, National Gallery Singapore (2018); Speech Acts: Reflection-Imagination-Repetition, Manchester Art Gallery, United Kingdom (2018).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2020
