Eva Rothschild (b. 1971)
Summer Programme | 2 May - 1 November 2026
Eva Rothschild (b.1971) is an artist best known for her sculptural practice and large-scale public commissions across the UK, Ireland and the United States. Born in Dublin, she studied Fine Art at the University of Ulster and completed an MA at Goldsmiths, London.
Working with a wide range of materials including fabric, leather, resin, wood and Jesmonite, Rothschild combines hand-made processes with industrial fabrication. Her sculptures frequently reference modernist traditions, employing geometric forms and elements associated with Minimalism. Describing her work as ‘magic minimalism’, Rothschild disrupts this formal language through her use of material, colour and composition. Colour is central to her practice: alongside a dominant palette of black, which she describes as operating “not so much as a colour but almost another material within the work”, she employs bold hues that reference the visual language of Constructivism.
Eva Rothschild (2023). Photo by Ann Purkiss, RA.
Practice and Approach
Throughout her career, Rothschild has used familiar geometric forms to explore how viewers perceive and relate to objects. She frequently unsettles expectations through what she describes as “material dissonance”, casting soft or malleable forms in enduring materials and vice versa. Her titles extend this sense of dissonance, using deliberately non-descriptive language to defer interpretation and encourage close attention to the physical qualities of each work.
The positioning of Rothschild’s sculptures is central to her exhibitions. Arranged to create visual compositions and to encourage movement through space, the works are, as she notes, “apprehended by the eye and the body in tandem”. Sculpture, for Rothschild, is defined by physical encounter, changing as the viewer moves around it and engages with it.
Rothschild’s work prioritises sensory experience over narrative interpretation, inviting viewers to engage directly with material, colour and form. In a world saturated with information, this emphasis on direct, physical encounter offers a timely moment of pause and reflection.
Eva Rothschild at Goodwood Art Foundation
Presented in the Pigott Gallery and extending into the surrounding landscape, Eva Rothschild’s exhibition at Goodwood Art Foundation brings together key sculptural works alongside a newly commissioned large-scale tapestry, woven locally at West Dean College’s Tapestry Studio. This continues Rothschild’s long-standing collaboration with the studio, following earlier projects for Sadler’s Wells East. Textile works have long been integral to her practice, allowing her to translate geometric imagery and vivid, neon colour into tactile three-dimensional form. As Rothschild explains, “weaving as a way of making images works for me because of the uncertainty of surface and because the image avoids becoming fixed”.
Eva Rothschild, The Out Breath (2024) at Sadler's Wells. © Eva Rothschild. Courtesy Sadler's Wells. Photo: Peter Cook
Indoors, works such as Technical Support (2016) exemplify Rothschild’s distinctive visual language of geometric and serial forms. Outdoors, works including Cosmos (2018), Hazard (2018), and Familiars (2023) explore colour and architectural form in dialogue with the landscape. Cosmos, a monumental open structure formed from interlocking black aluminium beams, features spray-painted gradients of colour on its internal faces that destabilise the viewer’s sense of surface, space and movement, while Hazard evokes ideas of borders, restriction and urban tension.
Selected Exhibitions and Commissions
In 2009, Rothschild was awarded the Duveens Commission at Tate Britain, and in 2014 she was elected a Royal Academician. In 2019, she represented Ireland at the 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, with the major solo exhibition The Shrinking Universe. In 2023, she was commissioned to create two new tapestries for the new theatre at Sadler’s Wells East.
Her work has been the subject of institutional solo exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art; Dublin City Gallery; the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; The Hepworth Wakefield; and Kunsthalle Zürich. Recent public commissions include Double Rainbow, Central Bank of Ireland, Dublin (2022), and My World and Your World, King’s Cross, London (2020).
