Material World
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If you peer through the doors of the Time- academic ability and particularly by his Life building in New Bond Street (as we did struggles with maths. He spent a year at on our recent ‘Hugh Casson’s London’ walk) Preston School of Art (1940-41) and moved you can still see Geoffrey Clarke’s welded to the Manchester School of Art the iron relief, ‘Complexities of Man’. This is just following year, but his education was then one of a distinguished collection of works interrupted by the war, when he joined the Casson commissioned for the building as a RAF. After a year at Lancaster School of Art permanent showcase of British design in 1947, he succeeded the following year in (including work by such major figures as Ben getting on to the RCA’s graphic design Nicholson and Henry Moore, although some course, newly established by the Rector, elements have controversially been Robin Darwin. But Geoffrey was not inspired removed). Time-Life opened just a year after by the course’s comparatively traditional Casson directed the Festival of Britain’s teaching, and soon switched to Stained Glass acclaimed temporary displays, which under Robert Goodden. He also explored included a work by Clarke in iron and stained many other media, and his 1951 Diploma was glass in the Transport Pavilion. Clarke also for stained glass, engraving and iron worked on the other outstanding sculpture. In fact it had been in the in Woods, architectural project of the period, Coventry Metals and Plastics Department – rather Cathedral, where he designed and made than the Sculpture Department – that he had windows for the nave as well as the cross for found a brand new forge and anvil, and Material the openwork metal flèche (spire), and the started to make iron sculptures. He had high altar cross which stands in front of the already been on an industrial welding course Graham Sutherland tapestry. From the early run by the British Oxygen company in 1950 1950s until the late 1960s he was very prolific, (where he first met Lynn Chadwick). The carrying out around fifty architectural Department was located above the Science world commissions. Museum’s aeronautical section, but when his This concentration on architectural works night-time visits disturbed the aircraft meant that he had fewer gallery shows of suspended below he was given studio space Geoffrey Clarke pushed work for sale, and is also why he chose to behind the building, which he continued to leave London to secure a larger working occupy until 1954. the boundaries in post- space. Perhaps it also explains why he is less In 1955, Geoffrey and his wife Bill (who he war sculptural technique. well-known today than his contemporaries had met at the RCA) left London and moved such as Reg Butler and Lynn Chadwick. to a large early C19 house, Stowe Hill, near Catherine Croft looks But, as Peter Black commented during a Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. The home and 1994 exhibition of Clarke’s work, ‘The studio they established there was profiled by back at his architectural opportunities for collaboration that arose at Country Life as ‘stark modernity in a that time, far from being an artistic Victorian frame’, the writer noting (without work compromise, kept Clarke from the reproach) that ‘Few people manage to potentially damaging routine of making decorate a house with a complete disregard small sculpture for private buyers... Not for its period.’ The article commended the every artist relishes the demands made by ‘assured brilliance of colour, the precise and architects, nor wishes their work merely to austere arrangement of shapes’. Photographs embellish a building.’ But Clarke clearly did, showed built-in furniture, benches and box and worked with many of the leading seating, while there was praise for the architects of the day, including Basil Spence, Edinburgh Weavers textiles and Indian rugs, Hugh Casson, Peter Moro, Peter Shepheard and the lavish use of colours such as orange and Gollins Melvin Ward. But, although his and olive green. Several of the main sculptures and relief panels featured in or on bedrooms were knocked together to make a many prominent buildings, he is no longer a stained glass workshop, and – crucially – the household name. A reappraisal is much stables offered space for him to set up a forge needed, and this should be prompted by an where he could experiment with aluminium. exhibition at the Pangolin London Gallery The works at the current Pangolin this autumn which includes four pieces exhibition bridge this period of innovation directly relating to some of his most and experiment. They include two important architectural commissions. maquettes: one for an enormous work, The Geoffrey Clarke’s involvement with both Spirit of Electricity (1958) which is still in Time-Life and Coventry Cathedral came place on Basil Spence’s Thorn House in about through his studies at the Royal Upper St Martin’s Lane, London, and Opposite: The Spirit College of Art, but his route to the College another for a relief originally in a branch of of Electricity (1958) was tortuous. He was born in Derbyshire in Westminster Bank on New Bond Street. The by Geoffrey Clarke 1924. His father was an architect who had latter was re-sited at Warwick University after (above). The work is still in place on Basil taught at the Architectural Association and the bank building was demolished. The Spence’s Thorn House also had his own etching press, while his gallery is also showing a test panel for the (now Orion House) grandfather had run a successful church large window at Taunton Dean in Upper St Martin’s Crematorium, (by Robert Potter, still in use, Lane, London. furnishing business. Geoffrey always Photography by assumed that he too would become an and listed Grade II) and Square World V Sarah J Duncan architect, but he was deterred by his lack of (1959), one of a set of panels made for St 34 C20 Magazine/Issue 3 2013 C20 Magazine/Issue 3 2013 35 Far left: aluminium relief for the staircase at Castrol House (1959). Left: auditorium mural at Nottingham Playhouse (1963) Chad’s, Rubery (Richard Twentyman, more like handling metal directly, or carving Left: test panel for 1956/57) but rejected by the parish and wood, than working with wax or clay which window at Taunton removed before consecration of the church. are shaped by hand: ‘From the start, he Deane crematorium The Spirit of Electricity had its origins in the regards “Styrocell” as metal, and shapes it by spiky welded iron works that Clarke was one of several methods: with a hot wire or creating behind the Science Museum other hot implements, a sharp knife or saws. building, and was inspired by images of Thus he builds up a full scale pattern from historic light bulbs and radar antennae in the shaped blocks of expanded polystyrene, museum itself. The brass maquette must joining them with adhesives and, if necessary, have functioned mainly as a presentation filling cracks in the material with tool. Translation to bronze (to ensure its polyurethane foam formed in situ by mixing longevity in an exposed location where iron two liquid components. Once complete, the would rust) required the construction of an pattern is taken to the foundry, whole or in 80ft wood and fibreglass model in Clarke’s sections, depending on its size, and packed in barn, which then had to be sent off to a mould sand. He finds it necessary to have professional foundry. He found the process more than the normal “air-venting” but only laborious, expensive and frustrating. the usual number of feeders and risers... When he first began to use aluminium, he Eventually the molten metal is poured in, used an open-cast method, pressing material vaporising the foam pattern as it comes into into moist sand and forming voids which contact with it.’ were then filled with molten metal. But this Perhaps Geoffrey Clarke’s reputation method does not allow undercutting of suffers from his being seen (mistakenly) as forms, and in Suffolk he was able to explore mainly an ecclesiastical designer and stained the use of expanded polystyrene to create glass specialist, rather than purely a sculptor. more complex shapes. It is unclear to what Some of his best architectural works have extent he worked out the potential of this been destroyed or lost: Castrol House (now method for himself (others were Marathon House) was converted from offices experimenting similarly at about the same to flats twenty years ago, and there is now no time), but he learned to make excellent use of trace of his staircase mural. The piece that the fact that a polystyrene form bedded in Basil Spence installed at his own weekend sand will vaporise when molten aluminium is house on the river at Beaulieu in Hampshire poured in. While Square World V and the is no longer in situ. However, others are Westminster Bank piece both used the preserved by listing, including panels in simpler open-cast method, the Taunton Nottingham Playhouse (Peter Moro, 1963), Deane windows have a fully 3D quality that gates and retractable cast aluminium grilles could only be achieved by the more in the banqueting hall at Newcastle Civic sophisticated polystyrene technique. Centre (GW Keynon, 1965), and the doors Geoffrey’s interest in innovative processes to the library at Churchill College, was further shown in A Sculptor’s Manual Cambridge (Sheppard Robson, 1968). (written with Stroud Cornock), a detailed I would very much like to know the fate of and practical guide in which he explained three of his works, originally installed at that ‘The modern sculptor working in the Culham atomic research centre, Aldershot wealth of new media and processes available Civic Centre and Exhall Grange School (the to him has need of an up-to-date source of first purpose-built school for partially sighted readily accessible information.’ He even children in the UK).