Hepworth made this sculpture in St Ives, North Cornwall, where she moved to live in 1939, one of a number of British artists who settled in this Cornish fishing village making it one of the most culturally significant locations for British art of the twentieth century. The title ‘Pelagos’ is the Greek word for sea. The spiralling, ovoid form was carved out of the wood and then polished to accentuate the grain which contrasts with the smoothly painted, curved inner plane. In other words it has clearly been carefully and meticulously crafted; yet the whole is also reminiscent of something natural: a shell, a breaking wave or a pebble washed smooth by the tide. Thus, while the sculpture is clearly something that has been made, it has the purity of shape and texture of something organically formed, something that could almost have been found. Incidentally, the Latin word ‘invenio’ means ‘I find’ but it’s also the root of our word ‘invent’: both meanings, I feel, are relevant here. The two arms of the spiral are linked with seven taut strings that could nearly be those of a rudimentary musical instrument. I am reminded of Homer singing with his lyre of Odysseus’ journeyings across the seas, though I have no justification whatsoever for thinking so. But I would say, with more conviction, that Hepworth’s sculpture is both modern and natural yet simultaneously suggestive of something very ancient.
