Riff
Clement MEADMORE
Australia/USA 1929-2005, arrived USA 1953
Riff 1996
Painted Steel
Born in Melbourne, Meadmore trained as an engineer and industrial designer. He worked as a furniture designer before making his first welded metal sculptures in the early 1950s. Traveling widely over the next decade, he moved permanently to the United States in 1963. At the time of his death in New York, Meadmore’s international reputation was foremost among Australian sculptors of his generation.
Meadmore’s monumental sculpture combines aspects of the prevailing post-war styles of abstract expressionism and minimalism. In spite of their imposing mass and industrial character, their appearance suggests a spontaneity of gesture, weightlessness and rhythmic motion.
As an amateur musician, Meadmore’s fondness for jazz underlies the title of this work as does his own statement that ‘…a sculpture is a presence inhabiting the environment’.