The sculptor Barry Flanagan studied at St Martin’s school of Art in London between 1964 – 1966 under Sir Anthony Caro, whose method he was greatly influenced by, and he also taught alongside Caro at London’s St Martin’s and Central schools of art until 1971. During this time he exhibited at the seminal 1969 exhibition ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ at the ICA in London.

Until the late 1970s his art was of a spare, abstract nature formed of the minimalist arrangements of simple materials such as rope, sand, cloth and wood. He had a strong impulse to allow process and the materiality of the work to construct meaning.

His later career was defined by the popularity of his bronze Hares and the other animals, but it is for his minimalist and often playful earlier abstract work on which his reputation is founded. The regard for this period was highlighted with a large survey exhibition at Tate Britain in 2011, Barry Flanagan: Works 1964 – 1982.

This piece comes from the end of this abstract period and exhibits a deft and witty use of simple sheet steel. It was installed at Wormsley in 2017.