reviews

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"Rance's steel sculpture plays on tensions between old and new. Its simple geometric form is essentially modernist, yet strongly evokes a much earlier age with a sense of spirituality that is at odds with its modern environment.

Entering the sculpture's interior through a gap in the steel rods affords a rare moment of refuge, a reference to the church's role as sanctuary. Any sense of security is short lived however, as the converging struts draw our eyes upwards to accentuate the feeling of being penned in on all sides by the towering office buildings."
Gavin Street review www.londonart.co.uk The Economist Plaza 2001

"It may seem irreligious to suggest that the line between life and death is commonly crossed over, anyway. Victoria Rance's cage with open doors is delicately wrought out of material to create an essential place within a place. It is straightforwardly necessary for sculptors to create to control a place for atmosphere. The combination of church, which already predetermines certain expectations, and Rance's transparent mausoleum is strong. The whole place is brooding anyway and yet this suggests a stillness after the event, that something has already happened.

Allowing even tawdry comparisons with the gates of heaven, dearly departed and the outstretched wings of a dove, Rance desires to bring a certain level of tenderness back into the situation; the priest might preach this anyway, from the pulpit, but here given references merge with artistic production."
Sacha Craddock Dead Happy catalogue 2001 St John's Waterloo

"Victoria Rance creates apparently fragile structures in steel.The resulting lace-like patterns resemble decorative wraps or blankets or fine silk veils. She works with memories gathered from her past, reconsidered from a current point of view. Religion, death and life inform sculptures that become memento mori or reflections of an unusual free-ranging childhood.

Attic 2004-05 is based in her recollections of the 'Under 12's Camp Attic,' where Rance and childhood friends gathered, a secret place where older siblings were not permitted. The sculpture is the evocation of a roof space, made from leaves purchased from the catalogue of decorative steel foliage and flowers. Rance has created a safe place, that is as much camouflage tent or cover as it is an attic. Once assembled, the sculpture was sandblasted and sprayed successively with hot zinc and hot copper. The resulting near terracotta colour further endows the work with the association of the roof hideaway. "
Ann Elliott Fe2O5 catalogue Darlington Arts Centre 2005 & APT Gallery 2006

"A series of sculptures look like they have something to do with places to shelter, or protection, in the way that shells do. But they also have an air of the residual about them, as if what was once there has vacated the safety of this shelter.

There are no literal narratives, rather, they have an overall sense of humanity. The absence of clear practical function which these objects display further adds a spirituality, or religious aspect to them insofar as what we cannot see in terms of practical function, we invent as metaphor and icon."
KM www.londonlostandfound.com Victoria Rance The Mark Tanner Sculpture Award Standpoint Gallery, Hoxton

"Rance's particular talent to evoke into almost visible form; a sort of alembic of infinity. A work like this acts like a valley of dry bones and almost compels the viewer to clothe it with flesh. Whether this "flesh" is actually narrative shape, psychological analysis, historical association, structural interpretation or material resonance - all of which are perfectly possible - Rance provides us with the phonemes of a visual language, the minimal visual signifiers that the viewer needs, once drawn into these works, to participate in a language that speaks of the richness, complexity and depth of life itself."
Charles Pickstone Image Journal USA 2005