It is one of my earliest memories. All I remember is having so much fun, climbing in, out, around, and through sculptures.
Playing hide and seek by dint of the artworks.
In my memory it was a Henry Moore exhibition, but on discovering a little pile of long-forgotten photographs (fiendishly mixed up with some of my parents’ late 1980s prints), followed by a little on-line research, I learn that it was a much wider exhibition, organised by the Greater London Council (GLC), that Battersea Park affair in 1966.
Not only Henry Moore & Barbara Hepworth but also F. E. McWilliam, Bernard Meadows, Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, Anthony Caro, Hubert Dalwood, William Turnbull, John Hoskin, Brian Wall, Phillip King, David Hall, David Annesley, Kim Lim and David Smith…apparently. I doubt if the three-going-on-four-ish version of me took all of that in.
The exhibition was thoroughly reviewed by Norman Lynton in The Guardian that May…
Norman Lynton on Battersea Sculpture Sat, May 21, 1966 – 7 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
…and by Nigel Gosling in the Observer the next day:
Gosling On Battersea Park Sun, May 22, 1966 – 24 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
My guess is that we, the Harris family, ventured to the exhibition the following weekend, the late May Bank Holiday, although it’s possible that it was later that summer, perhaps the August Bank Holiday.
The reason I suspect it was the earlier holiday is because the photos look to me as though dad wanted those pictures from that exhibition to use as examples for his photographic studio classes that spring and summer.
Dad’s shop and studio was in St John’s Hill, Battersea.
Such a photogenic exhibition up the other end of Battersea would have been too good an opportunity to miss in those days, when (as I understand it) the studio was still a key part of dad’s business.
Anyway, that was dad’s job. My job was having fun.
The “pictures for the studio” theory would also explain why I hadn’t seen the pictures before now. Dad probably rescued those prints from the shop when he closed down the shop in the mid 1980s and the packet got mixed up then with mum and dads holiday snaps from the late 1980s. The negatives, sadly, seem lost.
Still, it was quite extraordinary seeing these pictures when I discovered them in March 2021, nearly 55 years after the event.
I have such a strong memory of having a wonderful time that day in Battersea Park and the pictures bear that out.
I have a feeling that mum didn’t really approve of this “let the children play” style exhibition. I can imagine there was a view in a fairly large section of the public that such sculptural works are to be revered rather than toyed with by children.
But I think such exhibitions are a superb idea.
Personally, I have always been drawn to sculpture. Perhaps my fondness for sculpture would have happened anyway. But something tells me that my love of sculpture was forged that day in Battersea Park, which I so clearly remember as being just the most amazing fun.
You can see all the pictures (there are only eleven, most are shown in this piece) in Flickr by clicking here or below:
