In photography, the appreciation of sculptural form encourages repetition and isolation of form with consideration for detail and environment. A single photographic frame can offer a concentrated analysis of structure and surface material: the opportunity to revisit angles, depth of shadow and gradients of light. Accentuated scale, monumentality and exaggerated viewpoints reveal the photographer’s artistic inscription while exposing the collapse of sculptural perception within a two-dimensional visual field and medium.

Photographers such as Gemma Levine, a renowned portraiture photographer mentored by the Modernist sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986), sought to examine three-dimensional form within a methodology that retained the sculptor’s intended expression. Catalytically cited for exploring object documentation and perception in film, Levine’s recorded observations of Moore’s sculptures from 1978 align with the contemporary practices of John Chiara, Kevin Cooley, Victoria Jenkins, Colin Patrick Smith and Material Conjectures – offering potential for alternative classifications of ‘anonymous sculptures’ and topographies.

Arrive and likewise depart adopts a critical vantage point for accessing the intersections of sculpture in photography, considering manifestations and gestures of form framed within a two-dimensional space negotiating sculptural rhetoric.