Marc Quinn, who famously made a yoga-themed gold statue of Kate Moss, is to show 10 new sculptures at the Sir John Soane’s Museum in the first display by a contemporary artist created specially for the venue.
The artist said he scoured the museum in London – which is bursting with Roman sculptures, Hogarth paintings, an alabaster sarcophagus and the Georgian tomb of a dog, among many other items – to find enough space for his lifesize sculptures.
Quinn, whose works include a self-portrait using 10 pints of frozen blood, said: “When I first had the idea, it wasn’t a question of whether I could make them, but whether it would be physically possible to find room for them.”
The sculptures, to be installed in the spring, are based on casts made from the body of his partner, Jenny Bastet, while he embraces her. Each required the couple to stand for almost two hours covered in tight, dental rubber coating, before the moulds were peeled off to be cast in eggshell-thin fibreglass.
They will all be fragmentary: one clasping arm, a torso with one leg, a heavily veined hand, instantly recalling the myriad fragments of antique sculpture scattered through the museum.
Quinn said: “Fragments can have such a powerful impact, [they have] so much locked up in them, somehow embodying the whole object but often with an even stronger emotional impact.”
The exhibition, called Drawn from Life, will mark the most significant contemporary art installation in the museum, and the launch of a new programme inviting artists to the crowded rooms in the former home of the revered Georgian architect who gave it its name.
Bruce Boucher, the museum’s director, said: “We’ve been looking inward for the last seven years, working on this major project in the history of the building, reinstating and opening up spaces that haven’t been seen for almost 200 years. Now is the time to look outward – and to cross boundaries, as Soane himself did. All the art in this house wasn’t old [when he bought it]. He befriended artists and bought contemporary art.”
When Boucher arrived this year, his director of development, Anh Nguyen, had a guilty admission: she had already virtually signed off the Quinn project, based on a dinner party conversation. “It just seemed such a perfect fit for the museum,” she said. Fortunately Boucher agreed: “It was immediately clear to me that we were travelling on the same road.”
Quinn – whose best-known works include a sculpture of the artist Alison Lapper, first exhibited on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth – said the sculptures were a work of joy and a celebration of his three-year relationship with Bastet.
Asked what she thought of the project, he said: “She loved the idea. She’s a dancer, so she’s used to holding a pose for long periods – though she did faint twice.”
• Marc Quinn: Drawn from Life, Sir John Soane’s Museum, 28 March to 23 September 2017
• This article was amended on 20 December 2016 to clarify that the sculptures are made from casts of the body of Marc Quinn’s partner.
