WHIRLY BIRD, 1997
CLEMENT MEADMORE
bronze
46.0 x 84.0 x 50.0 cm
signed, dated and numbered at base: Meadmore 1997 1/4
inscribed with title and initialled on base: WHIRLY BIRD ART
Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne
‘Since 1990 Meadmore’s sculpture has followed two parallel paths. First, the artist has felt free to return to formal ideas developed in the three main phases of his work: the dense, coiled sculptures of the 1960s, the sculptures composed of multiple parts made in the 1970s, and the branching sculptures of the 1980s. In doing so Meadmore has refused to look upon his work of the preceding decades in terms of a series of distinct episodes in a linear progression. Instead, it serves as a collection of formal resources available to be drawn on and reworked at will. Thus Terpsichore and Helix, both of 1993 [and works that relate closely to Whirly Bird, 1997], return to the dense coil configuration of Meadmore’s work of the 1960s, but with a more pronounced Baroque flavour than any of the sculptures of that earlier decade.’1
1. Gibson, E., The Sculpture of Clement Meadmore, Hudson Hills Press, New York, 1994, pp. 112–114