Active Archives looks at the ways artists have made use of sculptors’ archives – be that as a means to build a legacy, to return to remembered exhibitions, or to chart the development of experimental ideas.

In 2014 Dr. Rowan Bailey (University of Huddersfield) convened a panel at the annual Association of Art Historians conference titled ‘Archival Interventions in Sculpture’ and this edition of Essays on Sculpture developed out of these discussions.

Using Barbara Hepworth as an example, Helena Bonett underlines that a sculptor’s legacies are not solely located in the document, while Elena Crippa tracks how the Frank Martin Archive reveals the experimental practice of the Sculpture Department at St Martin’s School of Art in the 1950s and 1960s.

Artists Sheila Gaffney and Jon Plowman discuss how memories of seeing art by others – specifically Charles Hewlings and Carl Plackman – early on their own artistic practices resonated over many years with their research.