What the work is
Sheila Hicks presented Escalade Beyond Chromatic Lands at the 2017 Venice Biennale. The Liverpool Biennial’s artist account describes brightly coloured synthetic bales piled towards the ceiling of the Arsenale. This named work anchors the broader subject of her textile installations.
How it was made
Fibre is gathered into large volumes and arranged in architectural space. The work is therefore encountered through accumulation and scale, rather than as a flat hanging whose composition can be read from one fixed distance.
What works
Colour occupies space. The piled forms invite a comparison between individual units and their collective mass, making the surrounding room part of how the work is perceived.
What does not
A photograph compresses depth and can disguise the scale of the encounter. The visual suggestion of softness is also not permission to touch, climb or sit on the installation.
What it influenced
The commission belongs to Hicks’s documented practice of monumental hangings and sculpture. It shows a route by which textile material can shape spatial experience, without reducing the whole practice to one technique.
Is it worth your time
Worth studying through both an installation view and closer detail. Ask what the room contributes to the arrangement and how colour changes when it becomes volume. The work’s material presence exceeds its palette.
