Anthony Caro

Since the early 1980s, Anthony Caro has been preoccupied with sculpture as space and metaphor for space. For the first time Karen Wilkin reveals the sculptor's fascination with the difference between interior and exterior and with sculptural volume and mass. Work emerging from Caro's studio over the last two decades has been preoccupied with density and containment. Wilkin looks back at Caro's career to find the seeds of this approach in pieces such as "Man Taking off His Shirt" (1955-56) through to the "Emma Lake" series (1977-78) and "Millbank Steps of 2004": mysterious interiors from which the visitor is excluded. These culminate in his work at Bourbourg, Pas-de-Calais, where Caro was commissioned to create a sculpture out of an architectural space. He treats the entire choir as a sculptural volume animated and punctuated by his invented structures such as an enormous baptismal font. Karen Wilkin has drawn on her vast knowledge of Caro's sculptures, based on thirty years of experiencing the works directly, visiting the studio and holding conversations with the artist. She reaches out to new audiences for his work whilst at the same time offering new insights and interpretations to meet the demands of the specialist.