BooksDirect

Description - Contemporary Australian Sculpture by Graeme Sturgeon

To understand the present state of sculpture in Australia it is useful to consider 1960s and 1970s sculpture in America and England. Throughout these two decades Australian sculptors kept a careful eye on international developments, and many of them went to London or New York for advanced study. In the 1960s in America, David Smith was proposing a radically different approach while in the UK, Henry Moore, Reg Butler and Lynn Chadwick were a dominant presence. After Moore's influence began to wane, a new push centred on London's St Martin's School of Art where Anthony Caro and his colleagues were developing a startlingly different conceptual position guided by structural considerations and the open manipulation of space, rather than the shaping of closed and solid forms. A significant number of Australian sculptors studied at St Martins and as a result the Caro influence has become widespread. Sculptors featured in this book who studied with Caro include Ron Robertson-Swann, Michael LeGrand and Kevin Norton. However, since the 1980s a new perspective has emerged, characterized especially by a return to figuration and use of a much broader range of materials.
This book shows just how imaginative and diverse contemporary Australian sculpture has become in the last decade. Included here, in both colour and black and white, are photographic reproductions of important works by 26 notable Australian sculptors. Each sculptor is profiled in a succinct and accessible way by Graeme Sturgeon, who also provides a penetrating overview of the contemporary scene as a whole.

Buy Contemporary Australian Sculpture by Graeme Sturgeon from Australia's Online Independent Bookstore, BooksDirect.

A Preview for this title is currently not available.