Kim Lim: Space, Rhythm & Light; Andrew Cranston: What made you stop here? – review

The Hepworth Wakefield
Toughness meets grace in a fine retrospective of the late Singaporean-British artist Kim Lim, while the convivial Scottish painter Andrew Cranston finds ready-made canvases, using the covers of old hardback books

There is a vision of wind on water in this captivating show achieved entirely through incisions in a sheet of white paper. The page is square, the scissored cuts not much more than a sheaf of extremely thin parallel lines. But they run at exactly the right diagonal across the surface to suggest that transient breeze and shift, redoubled in shadows cast through each incision on the wall behind the page – motion captured through the meticulous calculation of paper, void and angled line.

The art of Kim Lim (1936-97) darts between drawing and sculpture. Born in Singapore to Chinese parents, Lim lived in Malaysia under Japanese occupation, trained as a ballet dancer from early childhood, and moved to Britain at the age of 17. There never seems to have been a moment when she was not on the move.