This September Whitford Fine Art will hold an exhibition of sculptures by Jeff Lowe (b. 1952), as part of the gallery's 40th anniversary celebration calendar.
Made during the early eighties, the sculptures draw on the legacy of the constructed steel sculpture of Anthony Caro and David Smith. Lowe counters this tradition's stress on openness and lightness with a concern for the 'object' like that of Constantin Brancusi - he uses physically massive elements to create contained, emphatically volumetric structures. The sculptures also relate to ancient standing stones and to African sculpture, of which Lowe is a collector. They are particularly notable for the steel used. This originated in mistakes in the production line of a factory of the British Steel Corporation, and as such is unique to this body of work.
The sculptures have not been seen as a group since the two highly successful exhibitions at the Nicola Jacobs Gallery in which they were first shown (1981 and 1983). Lowe held his first solo exhibition whilst still a student at St Martin's School of Art, where he studied under William Tucker between 1971 and 1975. Important exhibitions during the seventies include 9e Biennale de Paris (1975), The Condition of Sculpture (1975), a solo exhibition at the Serpentine (1978) and The Hayward Annual (1979). He has since exhibited widely and internationally - with many solo exhibitions in Portugal and in New York. In 2011 he was included in the Henry Moore Institute's United Enemies: Sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s. Lowe has sculpture in public collections including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Contemporary Arts Society, the Hunterian Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Australia.
