University hosts Peter Randall-Page sculpture

Randall-Page’s Flayed Stone II was installed at Exeter’s Streatham Campus in the presence of the 56-year-old sculptor who was last month made an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University.

The sculpture will join about two dozen other significant works on the campus, including pieces by Barbara Hepworth and Paul Mount, and form part of the University’s Sculpture Walk.

Randall-Page was born in Essex, studied at the Bath Academy of Art and has lived on Dartmoor since the late 1980s. His work can be found in the collections of the Tate and British Museum and at the Eden Project, as well as in many private collections.

Flayed Stone II is part of a series of five works Randall-Page made in the late 1990s at his Dartmoor studio. Made from Finnish granite glacial boulders, it arose from his interest in two aspects of nature: firstly, the tendency to self-order and secondly, the tendency for random variations.   The series was the first in which he explored the space between the two.  He said: “In nature, there are strong ordering patterns but also randomness – no two leaves are the same,”

He hopes the sculpture, which has been placed to the side of the Northcott Theatre, will become an object of “contemplation and meditation that helps people think of the natural world in a fresh way”.

“Sculpture could seem a clumsy way to communicate in the 21st century when we have so many other means of communication,” he added. “But sculpture does deal with a particular area of human experience better than others – the experience of inhabiting a physical body and world.”

Flayed Stone II will be on loan to the University for five years and comes to the Streatham Campus from the sculptor’s acclaimed recent solo exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Gina Cox, the University’s Fine Art Curator said, “We are absolutely thrilled to have a sculpture by this artist on campus. Peter Randall-Page is a local artist of international standing – for me, he’s the next Henry Moore.”

Members of the public are welcome to visit the Sculpture Walk. Audio guides are available from the IT Helpdesk in the University library.