Tim Scott

Tim Scott b. 1937

T01369 Bird in the Arras IV 1969

Not inscribed.
Perspex, sheet and steel tubes, 110¼ x 262 x 98 (280 x 665.5 x 249).
Presented by Alistair McAlpine 1971.
Exh: Waddington Galleries, December 1969 (no number, repr. in colour); The Alistair McAlpine Gift, Tate Gallery, June–August 1971 (33, repr. in colour).
Lit: Anne Seymour, in catalogue of The Alistair McAlpine Gift, 1971, pp. 72–85.

‘Bird in Arras IV’ is in an edition of two. The artist made eight sculptures titled ‘Bird in Arras’ between 1966 and 1970. All the sculptures comprise different coloured acrylic sheers attached to a steel frame. The idea of appending acrylic sheets to a metal frame evolved from ‘Trireme’. The artist told the compiler that he suddenly realised that he could apply the sheets to a structure of poles. He found he was working with floating sheets of pure colour. However, he also found that he was forced back to problems of assembly and construction.

He decided that since pieces were fixed together he should make a feature of this within the sculpture. In ‘Bird in Arras IV’ he needed to support the sheets by extra poles shaped into three sides of a rectangle.

The title is a line from Walter de la Mare’s poem ‘Cake and Sack’ printed in Peacock Pie: A Book of Rhymes, 1913.

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