Tsunami
Michael LE GRAND
Australia born 1951
Tsunami 1988
Painted Steel
As a student in the early 1970s at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Le Grand’s aptitude for sculpture was first noticed and encouraged by Lenton Parr, then Director at the VCA. Le Grand later attended the influential St Martin’s School, London, where he encountered the revolutionary teachings of the British modernist sculptor Anthony Caro.
Caro’s style of assembled and welded steel sculpture abstract in approach, open in structure, colourfully painted, dispensing with the conventional base or plinth and utilising industrial I-beams, steel plates and mesh, was a formative influence on Le Grand.
While the titles of Le Grand’s works are not intended to have a narrative significance, the title of this work does evoke the same sense of swelling and turbulent motion as conveyed by the formidable wave-like elements that comprise the composition. Le Grand says of his creative process that ‘…I start with an idea, play with the material, run along behind it for a while, abandon some of the earlier preconceptions and expectations, and then step in to cull and tighten the image to suit my relationship with what has evolved!’