Page 49 - Studio International - January 1970

3
Tim Scott
Bird in Arras IV
Acrylic sheet and steel tube
Approx. 3 ft x 20 ft x 10 ft

Before embarking on any description or trayal of whatever principles are currently paintings and sculpture would include with
assessment of Tim Scott's new sculpture, or at shared by the brave, the true and the new. their details a condensed reference to the
least the three works most recently exhibited Tradition does not mean barren custom, nor range of colour involved. It sounds cumber-
in London, it would be churlish not to record is it properly contained by any academy: it is some but is in fact easy to do and immensely
the spacious extension of LESLIE WADDINGTON'S the visible evolution, in terms of painting and helpful in identifying specific works later on :
gallery which this show inaugurated in sculpture, of a living culture. especially when their title may consist only of
December. Across the road, at 34 Cork Street, As this note on Scott has begun in such a dis- a date, or a number. 'Red, magenta, brown
Waddington has secured large and well-lit cursive way, I should like to add that his and orange "Perspex", and lime-green
ground-floor premises at the corner of Cork show at the Waddington Galleries II was painted steel tube' does bring the work back
Street and Vigo Street : there is also a capacious actually accompanied by a catalogue which into focus, whilst 'Bird in Arras IV, "Pers-
set of rooms downstairs where prints, mainly, not only reproduced all three sculptures, two pex" and steel tube' doesn't.
are to be displayed. Coinciding with the Scott in colour, but also contained nearly complete In reality, the three Scott sculptures looked
exhibition was a sizeable gathering of colour catalogue entries. (Dates were missing, and very fine in their lofty and unpretentiously
prints by Robyn Denny. Extra gallery space one likes to know about sequence.) The topic elegant new setting. With the exception of
in London is a real event; and especially when of catalogues is ripe for comment. At least Wine which at once caresses or delicately
it will be put to the intelligent use so indivi- two galleries devoted to contemporary art do sweeps on to the floor, both the other works
sible from Waddington's activities through- not issue catalogues at all but produce some extend Scott's preoccupation with movement
out the 'sixties. form of 'souvenir card', containing a colour in space combined with the idea of traversing
This policy strikes a particularly sympathetic plate, a string of unhelpful 'prestige' informa- that same space at varying speeds or with
chord with the present writer because, in tion about inclusion in foreign museum shows moments of pause. He is succeeding in mak-
gradually gathering together a number of or biennales, and possibly a caption (not ing the structural props work as a linear
first-class younger artists like Scott, Hoyland always) for the colour plate. We do not require articulation of each sculpture as a whole, as
(with lately Caulfield), Moon and others, lush monographs for each exhibition but it is well as an extension of their relative planes—
Leslie Waddington has not renounced the a dealer's plain duty to provide a list of all and, increasingly, flow or shoot into a new
claims of an older generation which, in his the paintings, drawings or sculptures shown life by implicitly carving out new areas of
case, includes Elizabeth Frink, Terry Frost on the relevant occasion. A kind of racing space either on the ground or vertically, or
and Patrick Heron. Artists over the age of card for the hot favourite is no substitute. at an angle, in the air. What Scott is doing in
forty or so do not always seize up in creative There is going to be chaos in the years ahead sculptural terms is as original as ever in its
atrophy though they often face problems that in selecting material when large shows are ceremonial beauty but too complex for a
youth skims over; and it is good to find a planned at museum level; and if critics are to brief note, especially as it relates to some
dealer-entrepreneur with sufficient confi- be allowed any useful function, they need magnificent works shown earlier this year at
dence to maintain a rough and ready con- precise documentation from which to work: Oxford, which few people saw. His Bird in
tinuity. British art has suffered terribly all not only as aides-memoires but to provide exact Arras theme is achieving in mid-air what
through my lifetime by the mindless way in references in any written report at the time of earlier sculptures embodied in slowly flower-
which it has been disrupted by fashion and each show. We all make grateful use of colour ing or converging movement on the ground;
thus condemned, ruthlessly, to a series of transparencies and photographs supplied by and this, and many other facets of Scott's
bright but disconnected fire-work displays, dealers, but a simple printed list giving all the work, which require consideration as a whole,
each one in a fresh-minted vacuum. Artists information would obviate the continual without the limitations of fragmented evi-
who exhibit at Waddington's are not linked need for home movies which often involve dence, must be described at length in a later
together in any stylistic sense, but visitors extra time and travel. essay. q
are at least spared the impression of walking And as the accuracy of the colour plates in BRYAN ROBERTSON
into a tightly-regulated game reserve in Scott's catalogue was extremely uncertain
which mention of work by any artist over (nobody's fault, colour reproduction being
forty is in itself suspect, and certainly a be- what it is) I wish that all dealers, when listing