John Maine

Description

Enclosure is a section of a circular column, three-quarters of the circle being enclosed and one quarter open. Made as part of a series of columns, this was the largest of a group of ten exhibited at Winchester Cathedral in 1992. However, typically of John Maine's working practice, when the sculpture had been standing in his studio for several years after the exhibition, he began to work on it again and developed the piece to its current state - to a point where he considers it to be complete.

During the first half of this decade John Maine was also working on other large sculptures devoted to the column form, most significantly the Doddington Stacks, of local sandstone, Strata, a 30 metre high granite monument in Japan, and Chiswell Earthworks, an enormous landscape sculpture of earth and stone built into the Dorset coast. Some of the qualities in these works are to be found in Enclosure, most obviously in the column form, but also in the layers which make the structure, and in the treatment of the outer surface. Here the carved, gently undulating pattern unites the separate elements - not precisely, however, as John Maine likes the viewer's eye to make the final leap and therefore the connection. The point at which Enclosure becomes different is in the break of the circular form, the place where the artist reveals the interior space. The inside of the sculpture is rough and weathered, much as the stone would appear when cut from the quarry and left in the open air for a long time. The patina of age, with old quarry marks and cuts made by the artist some time ago, contrasts strongly with the freshly carved and textured exterior, where the diagonal ripples add dynamic movement and take the eye around the form. The outside, it would seem, has become the interior.