David Annesley

Godroon

1966

In Tate St Ives

Modern Art and St Ives: New directions after 1960

Artist: David Annesley born 1936
Medium: Painted steel
Dimensions: Object: 1441 x 1441 x 508 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Alistair McAlpine (later Lord McAlpine of West Green) 1970
Reference: T01343

Catalogue entry

David Annesley b. 1936

T01343 GODROON 1966

Not inscribed.
Painted aluminium, 56¾ x 56¾ x 20 (144 x 144 x 51).
Presented by Alistair McAlpine 1971.
Exh: Waddington Galleries, March-April 1966; New British Sculpture/Bristol, Bristol, May-June 1968 (1); The Alistair McAlpine Gift, Tate Gallery, June-August 1971 (5, repr.).
Lit: Anne Seymour, in catalogue of The Alistair McAlpine Gift, 1971, pp. 37–48.

Some of David Annesley’s sculpture has come out of experimenting with grid systems, although geometry was just a tool — it was not important for its own sake. ‘Godroon’ originates in a grid of circles. The grid emerged partly through working with curving forms and observing the patterns they made and partly from making drawings on graph paper. It functions as a kind of hidden reference; the shape is something that has stepped out of a total system — in this case one where the outer and inner elements are identical.

The title ‘Godroon’ is a term usually used for ornamentation in architecture, plate or dress, meaning ‘one of a set of convex curves or arcs joined at their extremities to form a decorative pattern’ (O.E.D.). T01343 is one of an edition of three.

Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1970–1972, London 1972.