Page 27 - Studio International - October 1966

British sculpture : the developing scene

sculpture that is, as it were, stumbled upon, discovered as Horizontality implies extension, and extension within
a surprising and engaging thing there. The form flows the present framework of taste implies regularity or at
on to the floor in Piché's Deposition in White (1966) ; it least an order of rhythms. Phillip King writes :
performs its dance-like action there in Waldemar It seemed to me there was a danger in my earlier work that
d'Orey's XII (1966) ; it is a luminous stain of highlights the ground was becoming too much of a fetish, and could
and images in Paolozzi's Hidra (1966) ; an ambiguous take on the role of a new pedestal. What was happening on
process, opening and closing, in Flanagan's Untitled the ground seemed to belong to a specific order of shapes
Sculpture (1966) ; an evolving one in Woodham's Y (1965). and positions, different from what was happening above it.
Concern with the ground is one aspect of a disposition So I have tried to expand my sculpture on the ground with-
to horizontality. Is this an escape from the monolith-or out using it as an area where sculpture can rest in order to
a memory of landscape? In at least one of Isaac Witkin's move on, or as a thing to conquer.
The object too has all sorts of insidious ways of remaining
new pieces the reference is frankly (and refreshingly) to
present in disguised form, as a vertebral column for instance
landscape : Winter (1966) shows a traditional imagery of or as a centre or starting point, or as an axis of symmetry
British art revitalized. The contained tension of this
tending to provide a much too defined core or middle. So I
piece is the mirror of a physical response; landscape is
have been concentrating on making a sculpture where the
projected as act rather than as a series of embodied furthest thing away from the middle is not an appendage
qualities-ruggedness, grandeur, etc. The effective but an extended happening to what exists in the middle,
Roland Piché departure from Moore is striking, while the suggestion of hence making the middle part of a total event equally
Deposition in white 1966 figuration is retained. important to all other events.
Fibreglass
7ft 6 in. x 4 ft

R. Robertson-Swann
Contact 1965 Steel sculpture
painted red and orange
Photo: John Goldblatt

Right Gerard Hemsworth
Easy squeeze 1965-6
Wood and plastic painted brown and pink
70 x 45 x 7 in.
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