WHIRLY BIRD, 1997

Important Australian + International Fine Art
Melbourne
4 May 2016
45

CLEMENT MEADMORE

(1929 – 2005)
WHIRLY BIRD, 1997

bronze

46.0 x 84.0 x 50.0 cm

edition: 1/4

signed, dated and numbered at base: Meadmore 1997 1/4
inscribed with title and initialled on base: WHIRLY BIRD ART

Estimate: 
$60,000 – 80,000
Sold for $112,240 (inc. BP) in Auction 42 - 4 May 2016, Melbourne
Provenance

Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne

Catalogue text

‘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