Anthea Alley

Spatial Form

1962–3

© estate of Anthea Alley

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In Tate Britain

Walk Through British Art: 1950

Free entry

Artist: Anthea Alley 1927–1993
Medium: Brass
Dimensions: Object: 337 x 279 x 298 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1964
Reference: T00655

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Anthea Alley gained recognition as a painter in the 1950s, making brutalist abstract paintings, often using everyday materials such as hessian sacks. However, she is best known for her sculpture and reliefs. This is one of a series of sculptures made from machine stampings; the pieces that remain after shapes have been stamped out of the metal by machine. Alley began to work with these stampings in 1962 and used a variety of metals and patterns to create effects of transparency and movement in her sculpture, ‘dividing up air into slices, light enough to make the air round them seem solid, or heavy and stable’.

Gallery label, April 2019

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Catalogue entry

Anthea Alley b. 1927

T00655 Spatial Form 1962–63

Not inscribed.
Welded brass, 13¼ x 11 x11¾ (33.5 x 28 x 30).
Purchased from the Hamilton Galleries (Grant-in-Aid) 1964.
Exh: Hamilton Galleries, March-April 1964 (4).
Repr: Studio, CLXX, 1965, p. 90.

This is one of a series of sculptures made mainly from machine stampings, that is to say from the lengths of metal remaining after strips have been fed into a machine which stamps out circular discs, ovals and such-like. Anthea Alley first began to work with these in 1962 and has used a variety of metals and patterns (usually only one kind in each piece) to obtain effects of transparency, space and movement.

Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1964–1965, London 1966.