Image of Event Horizon by Antony Gormley
Antony Gormley, Event Horizon. Photo © Dr Jim Roseblade

2009 Sculpture in the Close Exhibition

22 June – 28 September 2009

CARO – GORMLEY – KIEFER

This outdoor exhibition in the grounds of Jesus College combined new sculptures and installations with key works from the existing oeuvres of these three major artists.

  • Anthony Caro showed Babylon (1997-2001), a large tripartite work with ziggurat-like elements, as well as three powerfully minimalist works from the 1970s.
  • Antony Gormley created an exciting new installation, Sculpture in the Close, using cast iron and fibre glass figures located in the passages and courts and on the roofs of the College.
  • Anselm Kiefer created five new works related to his Women of Antiquity series of sculptures, and also showed a lead battleship from the Fur Chlebnikow group of works, as well as one of his renowned lead books.

For further information contact the Curator of Works of Art at curator-of-art@jesus.cam.ac.uk.

Foreword

The Master and Fellows of Jesus College are delighted to help celebrate the 8ooth anniversary of the University of Cambridge by hosting the eleventh Sculpture in the Close.

The exhibitors have been specially chosen for their great distinction in the world of sculpture. Anthony Caro and Antony Gormley were both educated at Cambridge, as was Charles Saumarez Smith who was invited to open the exhibition.

We also celebrate the 21st anniversary of the first Sculpture in the Close, which took place at the end of the second year of Lord Renfrew’s mastership. We acknowledge our gratitude to him for launching this series of exhibitions.

Sculpture in the Close has become so much a part of this college and a Cambridge tradition that it is difficult to remember how things were before it started. Jesus College is known well beyond Cambridge for these marvellous exhibitions of contemporary sculpture.

They are amateur exhibitions, run by the works of art committee led by Lord Renfrew and Rod Mengham and without professional help except for valuable advice from Dick Humphreys of Tate Britain and Tim Marlow from White Cube.

They have involved ungrudging help from many College departments. Our head gardener, Paul Stearn, and his team, our buildings manager, Alan Fosbeary, and his, and our maintenance supervisor Chris Brown deserve particular thanks. Our warmest thanks also go to the artists whose works have contributed to the success of these exhibitions. The generosity of the sculptors in lending their work is gratefully acknowledged.

We are grateful for continued help from the Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Company. And it is more than ever the case that the works of art committee could not continue to keep modern art so vigorously on the agenda at Jesus without the help of the contributors to the funds of the Friends of Art at Jesus College. We are most grateful to them all.

Robert Mair
Master

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