Yinka Shonibare: Dulwich Picture Gallery's Sculpture Garden

Yinka Shonibare CBE RA features in Dulwich Picture Gallery's Sculpture Garden. 

‘Material (SG) IV’ captures the idea of harnessing the wind and freezing it in a moment of time. Imbued with a remarkable sense of dynamism, the sculpture resembles a vast sheet of fabric, billowing in the breeze.  

The work is a commanding alternative to conventional monuments of personal power, instead exploring universal experience of historical change. The sculpture was born out of the artist’s Fourth Plinth commission ‘Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle’ for London’s Trafalgar Square in 2010. Shonibare felt that the ship’s sails, emblazoned with his signature Dutch wax batik fabric, could stand alone. The fabric was originally inspired by Indonesian design, mass-produced by the Dutch and eventually sold to the colonies in West Africa. In the 1960s, the material became a signifier of African identity and independence and in Shonibare’s hands, the “perfect metaphor for multi-layered identities.” Adorned with this iconic design, the sculpture becomes a powerful metaphor for the movement of people and global interconnectivity over time.