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To celebrate the recent conservation of Sea Music, the sculpture given to Poole in 1991 by the artist Anthony Caro, we are exhibiting:
- Concerto Series, Anthony Caro
Floor 1, Poole Museum
This series is a lively and lyrical group of sculptures which reflect the joy Caro found in music. Pieces from the series have been previously exhibited in Venice and in New York, but this exhibition is the first time such a large group has ever been assembled in one exhibition.
- 100 Views of Sea Music, David Ward
Floor 2, Poole Museum
The distinctive form of Sea Music is visible from many vantage points around Poole harbour. Over one year David Ward has captured it up close and from afar, prior to, during and after the extensive conservation work.
- Slow March, Anthony Caro
In front of Poole Museum
Evocative of the heavy, sonorous movements of a military band, this two metre high steel work, made in 1985, invites you in to Poole Museum.
- Sea Music, Anthony Caro
Poole Quay
Standing just 100 metres from Poole Museum, Sea Music creates a meeting point and viewing place to enjoy the sculpture up close and Poole Harbour at large.
Artist:
Sir Anthony Caro OM CBE RA
Sir Anthony Caro (8 March 1924 – 23 October 2013) was an English abstract sculptor who is internationally recognised as “one of the greatest sculptors in the second half of the 20th century”.
He first studied sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools in London and went on to teach at St Martin’s School of Art for over 25 years. Caro was an ambitious sculptor. He described how he got a job as Henry Moore’s assistant: “I found out his address, drove out there in the afternoon, knocked on his door and said ‘Can I come in? I want to work for you.’ He said ‘You might have let me know you were coming.’ I worked for two years with Henry Moore and he was very good to me. He was my teacher, a very wise and wonderful man, he taught me about drawing and we talked a lot about art.” Caro married the painter Sheila Girling in 1949, with whom he had two sons.
“Sculpture can be anything” was Caro’s approach to art. His work is characterised by the use of old industrial metal that was painted and shaped to create new forms. He came to public attention after his first major show at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1963, where his abstract metal sculptures, welded or bolted together, were presented standing directly on the ground so that they engaged the viewer on a one-to-one basis. His focus on form was unique for his time and inspired many future developments in contemporary sculpture.
In his later work such as ‘Sea Music’, Caro showed that he was a constant innovator. He explored the role of sculpture in relation to architecture, saying that they shared the same concerns – space, form, materials and scale – and needed to work together. His term for this was ‘sculpitecture’. Larger scale sculptures allowed the viewer to approach and interact with them from all sides. Caro compared the process of sculpture to writing music: “I sometimes think of sculpture like a concerto: there's the piano up above and the orchestra down below".
Caro was knighted in 1987, and in 2000 he became the first artist since Henry Moore to be awarded the Order of Merit. Major exhibitions include retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Tate Britain.
Poole Museum, 4 High Street, Poole, Dorset, BH15 1BW
