Group Description
Group Leader: B.G. Blakeley.
We are an active group formed for the study of Pictorial Art, Architecture
and Sculpture for all periods up to the present day. We meet at 10am on the
2nd. Thursday of each month, in one or other of the Group Member’s living
rooms.
Meetings have taken place regularly since our U3A Branch was first formed
six years ago. The attendance varies between ten and thirteen and
unfortunately we cannot comfortably accommodate any new members at present.
Our programme is varied, in the main chosen by the Group Members themselves.
It is usually based on a video or DVD borrowed from the U3A Resource Centre.
Members are encouraged to take an active part in discussion and
presentation.
Modern sculpture was the theme for our group in October provided by two DVDs
from the Resource Centre. Both featured the sculptor himself giving a
commentary on his own work free of intrusive music. Anthony Caro served as
an apprentice with Henry Moore but now works with steel, his benign
character at odds with his material. Antony Gormley’s material is quoted as
plaster, lead and air. His model often his own body. However with The Angel
of the North he has spectacularly adopted steel, a sculpture he hopes will
exist for 50 to 100 years; symbolic perhaps, he admits that it is ugly. The
Field is even more demanding with thousands of tightly packed terracotta
figurines all possessing a blank turned up stare! His latest work The Cloud
is an astonishing achievement; a human form captured in a mesh of tubular
steel off-cuts. The works of both sculptors are spread far and wide about
the world in museums, town squares and parks. Brian B.
