Fender

Eva Grubinger’s Fender is a readymade sculpture featuring a huge vulcanised rubber cylinder designed to protect a vessel against impact, known as a fender, belonging to a real ship.

Fender was first shown in Grubinger’s solo exhibition ‘Black Diamond Bay’, which was part of Fig-Futures, at the ICA in 2015. The show explored issues of colonial adventuring, maritime metaphors and connections between the past and present. Fender’s uncanny presence in a gallery resonates with reference to these themes.

Grubinger was born in Salzburg and studied at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin.

Fender now becomes a particularly apposite addition to the collection of The Box in Plymouth, a city with the largest naval dockyard in Western Europe and strong associations with maritime and seafaring history.