Stone Sculptures Inspired by Tamil Nadu at an English Stately Home
When British sculptor Stephen Cox first visited the south Indian town of Mamallapuram that is famous for its ancient stone temples, he “sensed the importance of spirituality in the practices of the local craftsmen who were making sacred Hindu idols, architecture and other devotional objects”.
“Stone is the beginning of everything,” he says. “What enthrals me in Mamallapuram is that you see monolithic boulders that have been converted into shrines and temples as well as evidence of the technique of excavating into the cliffs of granite that reveal deities in the living rock”.
Stephen Cox at the Grosvenor Galley in Mayfair with “Gendi” that relates to the dual sexuality of Ardhanarishvara, the union of male and female within a single form.
Cox was there during the festival of Ayudha Puja that worships the tools of creation and production and seeks the protection of the Hindu goddess Saraswathi. “Even the smallest tools from humble steel chisels to the forge, trolleys, hammers and the trusty tractor were given the rights of puja,” he says, describing the ceremonies at the local government school of sculpture and architecture near where he later worked.
This included “pouring oil over sculptures to provide religious impulse to their creation”. There was a “total and intense acknowledgement of the tools in the Vaastu tradition” of merging structural design and space.
That was 40 years ago. It drew Cox, as a sculptor, to the mythologies of ancient religions, and has led this summer to a large retrospective exhibition titled Myth at Houghton Hall, an 18th century stately home in Norfolk that is open till the end of September. Built in the 1720s for Sir Robert Walpole, then Britain’s prime minister it is now the seat of his direct descendent David, the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley.
Cox’s s sculptures, including small bronze works, are also on show at the Grosvenor Gallery in London’s Mayfair till the end of this month (June).
When I talked to him at the Houghton Hall opening, I realised the strong Indian involvement in the inspiration for the sculptures, as well as the stone that he used.
Mostly small delicately shaped works blend in the Houghhton mansion’s grand 18th century rooms with the original décor and ornaments. Indian connections include three “dark torsos” in black basalt. There are also a Bidri Jug and Bottle with a black patinated and copper casing inlaid with sterling silver, the bottle standing on the desk of Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General (right). Cox produced them using Karnataka’s traditional bidri metal handicraft in collaboration with the KASH Foundation in Bangalore, which links artists with traditional craftsmen.
A Bidri botle on Warren Hasting’s desk.
Outside, located on spacious lawns and hidden in woods, are 20 mostly large abstracts and statues with stone from Egypt as well as India along with other sculptures that are permanently there.
The works from Mamallapuram (also known as Mahabalipuram) show Cox’s sense of ancient Hindu mythology.
One of the most accessible and famous comprises a circle of 11 Yoginis (below) , sensuous female deities with human form and animal heads, carved in dark grey basalt, located in a clearing in one of the woods. Part of a series of 64 statues, they are based on Yoginis originally commissioned for 64 circular temples by a ruler during the south Indian Pallavi late 9th and mid-10th century AD dynasty. This became a discredite cult and led to temples being stripped of their most beautiful sculptures, says Cox.
Author and historian William Dalrymple writes in an essay in the exhibition’s expansively illustrated handbook: “In ancient India, yoginis were understood to be the terrifying embodiment of feminine shakti, beautiful, sensual yet fanged beings who feasted on human blood and possessed extraordinary yogic and tantric powers”.
Cox says that he considered there was some room for him as a sculptor “to return to a visual play on the theme of Yoginis looking for animals” like the rhinoceros and the gharial that were not represented in the cult. “With all the sensuality in Indian art there is also a ruthless violence that is represented, but usually in the function of protection and good. There is a very strong nature theme in the cult which may have good possibilities for this age of Global warning”.
Age 79, Cox trained at UK art colleges in the 1960s and is best known for his often-large monolithic sculptures in stone, with site-specific pieces initially in Italy and then in India and Egypt.
a circle of 11 “Yoginis” – sensuous female deities
His went to India when he was invited in 1985 by the British Council to go to Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu to represent Britain at the Sixth Indian Triennale, where he won a gold medal for his rock cut Holy Family group. He was chosen because he was willing to move there to work, not just visit. Initially he stayed for about six months and set up a workshop, which he still maintains with stpathies, the local craftsmen.
He draws on “indigenous materials to create contemporary works that resonate with historical and cultural connotations,” says the Royal Academy where he is a member. “Using traditional techniques, he has carved marble, alabaster and porphyry rock, and was the first artist for many centuries to gain access to the Imperial Porphyry Quarries in the Eastern Mountains of Egypt”.
His affection for the Tamil Nadu coastal people and traditions is demonstrated by Yatra (above), also called Granite Catamarans on a Granite Wave. First done in the mid-1990s at the Jamali Kamali Gardens near Delhi’s Qutub Munar (left) and now on show at Houghton, fishing boats are balanced on poles in black and white Indian granite.
“Yatra” – Tamil Nadu fishing boats balanced on poles
“I saw the coming and going of fishermen in their catamaran boats setting off like empty hands in the morning and returning with the sea’s bounty in the evening,” says Cox. “The Tamil word catamaran (Catu Maram) means bound logs and its stark simplicity of form reminded me of the supersonic passenger jet Concord that was built in my home city of Bristol”.
He was “struck by the vast difference between the two technologies” and thought that one day he would imagine a way to use the form and commemorate its beauty into a sculpture, which he eventually did. That happened after the 2004 tsunami hit the coast and led to the boats being modernised with fibre glass and resin, helped by South Korea. “With the white diorite posts that marched across the landscape of South India I devised a sea upon which the boats could float,” he says.
Anthony Gormley, a famous British sculptor, who taught art along with Cox at the start of their careers and had his work on show at Houghton last year, told me at the opening that his favourite sculpture was Interior Space, a 14-tonne sarcophagus or stone coffin first carved in 1995 (above).
The original “Yatra” being assembled in Delhi’s Jamali Kamali Gardens.
“Stephen’s use of the void is very interesting, making emptiness mean something with his use of space,” says Gormley. “You don’t need to go inside,” he laughed, explaining about the temptation to squeeze through a narrow vertical slit that only extremely slim people can do with any confidence they will be able to squeeze out again. Cox’s website more seriously says, “The imaginative conceptions of the ‘afterlife’ of the peoples of ancient civilisations is the driver of the series”.
There’s also a sense of possibly inaccessible or inescapable space in the arrangement of a decorative mass of delicately coloured Aswan granite from Egypt (right) that dominates the view from the main house down a wide swathe of grass that stretches into the distance towards Sandringham, King Charles’ country retreat.
It’s possibly the most instantly appealing work in the grounds and emerged, unexpected, when a large boulder was split into slices and revealed what looked like bodies and ghostly faces. Cox’s sculptor’s role came into play with the void between the slices, accessible through tempting gaps.
“For me,” says Cox, “art is a metaphor for the things that religion, as a domain, actually gives a man – the spiritual”.
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