Sir Eduardo Paolozzi

Description

'Every year between the ages of nine and fifteen, I'd go from Edinburgh to Milan, changing trains in London then in Paris. I'd always loved drawing engines, usually copying cigarette cards our shop's customers gave me.' This comment by Eduardo Paolozzi in a recent article by Frank Whitford gives a flavour of the sort of childhood memories that may have contributed to his vision as an artist. The idea of a mobile sculpture is compelling, and the fact that this piece is actually engineered to fit on railway lines indicates that it might well be displayed in a siding in Euston or Newcastle, or in Leith, Paolozzi's home town.

This flat wagon is piled high with sculptural fragments of a dismembered figure - massive hands, head and feet are typical images from the store of Paolozzi's mechanistic figures which are here with other items in organised chaos. He is reported in an article in The Times magazine as saying: 'Sculpture doesn't live near nature, it's an urban thing, so even if you don't like sculpture you might see something like this parked in a siding of a railway... People might see it on the way to work, and because this is figurative, people will recognise that it's not the usual load. If it's put in a railway siding, it's stuck under your nose for the ordinary commuter who might not go to sculpture parks - they can't miss it. It's a way of making sculpture more accessible.'

When London to Paris rests briefly at Sculpture at Goodwood - that sylvan setting in a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty - something of urban society is attached to nature. Eduardo Paolozzi is renowned for combining unlikely components, even opposites, in his work, and with London to Paris he has done so on a monumental scale.