Yesterday I had a great afternoon at the RA Summer Show. As I was leaving with ten minutes to go before it closed, and thinking I’d seen everything there was to see, I caught sight of the sculpture room (which was actually hard to miss!). I walked to the center of the room and did a 360 overview and … there was a Geoffrey Clarke piece on the wall. It was a piece I knew, TAUNTON DEANE CREMATORIUM TEST PANEL. (Item No 993 in the exhibition).
It’s better seen live, but all the work in the Summer Exhibition can be seen here.
Due to the wonderful photography of Walter Dirks we have some great photos of pieces of Geoffrey Clarke’s sculpture ‘Extraction and Refining of Oil‘. The beginning of a project to record the work …
Two panels from ‘The Chemist’s Table’
Two panels from the tableau on the chemical additives process to make lubricant oils
A single panel from the huge frieze section representing speed
In yet another attempt to make progress on promoting the sculpture by Geoffrey Clarke I am privileged to own, I have this week published the catalogue of photographs taken from the work.\r\n\r\nIt’s an idea, anyway.\r\n\r\nSee here or open this window:\r\n\r\n
Following on from yesterday’s image of the Geoffrey Clarke Exhibition Entrance, today’s is the transition wall, the introduction to Charles Cheers Wakefield and the birth of the Castrol brand.\r\n\r\nIn the late 19th century Charles Wakefield was working for Vacuum Oils Limited selling lubricants for heavy machinery. In 1899 he left to form his own oil company C C Wakefield Limited in Cheapside, London. Wakefield was a visionary and even at the beginning of the 20th century he saw that Automobiles and Aeroplanes would be the future of transport, and they would need lubricant oils. These oils would need sufficient liquidity to start working when cold but enough stability to work in extreme heat. Castrol was created, from mixtures of lubricants and Caster Oil taken from the Caster bean.\r\n\r\nBy the 1950s, when the new HQ Castrol House was commissioned, Castrol was synonymous with land speed records, motor racing and Honda superbikes.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n
It’s been many years in the making (!) but here’s the concept proposal for the entrance to the exhibition of Geoffrey Clarke’s ‘Extraction and Refining of Oil’ – his 1959 cast aluminium frieze covering 1,000 square feet of Castol’s HQ foyer.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n
