Hannah Valentine: Closeness is a diffuse border

Hannah Valentine has long made work about, around and scaled to the body. Favouring metal and rope as her most regular mediums, Valentine’s sculptures beg to be touched and carried, often echoing the ergonomic forms of gym equipment, free weights and kettle bells designed to be lifted again and again with little wear and tear. But the metal Valentine favours the most is more volatile, its surface subject to changes just from being exposed to the world. Bronze reacts with oxygen to form a patina over time, although regularly handled areas will resist this, becoming smooth and polished through repeated touch – tangible evidence of a relationship between body and object that is so different from the more sedentary connection between body and screen.

Valentine is interested in this evolution, in the way the routine movements of our hands are changing and what this might mean. “We look back at the hand in an evolutionary sense, and in particular, the movement of the thumb,” she says. “It was crucial in the development of our neural networks. It’s an access point for the world, key to much of what we find fulfilling, and stands out as a symbol of humanness itself.” In making objects that beg to be touched, caressed, lifted and carried – and in allowing audiences to actually do these things – Valentine’s sculptures remind us of our bodies, of how we move them and how these movements shape our lives.