{"id":20993,"date":"2025-07-24T19:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T19:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/20993\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T19:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T19:34:08","slug":"andrew-sabins-painting-and-sculpture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/20993\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Sabin\u2019s Painting and Sculpture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walking down a Chelsea<\/a> street and I spied a lump of art, and a sign at the bottom with the magic name of Henry Moore. Blimey, I didn\u2019t know he made that sort of art, so let\u2019s take a closer look.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not what I expected.<\/p>\n

Although the plinth seemed to say Henry Moore, if you walk around a bit, another word appears, and it turns out that the artwork is in front of a block of posh flats called Henry Moore Court.<\/p>\n

To explain, this block of posh flats used to be the site of the Chelsea College of Arts, which opened in 1895 on Manresa Road. In the 1960s they built a modern block for students as well as a hall of residence, and a fire station (not just for the students). The modern building was designed<\/a> by the LCC Job Architects of Ronald Robson-Smith and Austin Winkley, and later Michael Booth.<\/p>\n

The New Chelsea<\/a> was a modernist building in the International Style, described as \u2018spartan\u2019, if with impact, by the Architect & Building News (1965), and \u2018chunky\u2019 by Interbuild (1965). It was particularly notable for the double-height rooms and expansive use of glass.<\/p>\n

One of the college\u2019s previous teachers was also a sculptor and decided to sell one of his pieces to decorate the front. That teacher was Henry Moore, and he offered them Two Piece Reclining Figure No.1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Following changes in the college, the \u201cnew\u201d building was demolished in autumn 2010, and the current block was erected on its site.<\/p>\n

Henry Moore\u2019s sculpture was moved<\/a> to the college\u2019s current site right next to Tate Britain, and the new block of flats was named Henry Moore Court to try to absorb some of the glitter from the sculptor\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

And they commissioned a replacement work of art where Henry Moore\u2019s piece once stood \u2013 and that\u2019s the somewhat cuboid brutalist block that\u2019s there today.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s by Andrew Sabin<\/a> and is titled \u201cPainting and Sculpture\u201d Just like his predecessor, Andrew Sabin was also a student and teacher at the college.<\/p>\n

The bronze sculpture was cast by the Bronze Foundry<\/a> in Powys and installed by them in 2013.<\/p>\n

It has an interesting design, appearing to be both solid blocks and sculpted ones that are slightly crushed. In a way, it reminded me of the Spearmint Chews that you can still pick up in vintage sweet shops, which were chewy cubes you couldn\u2019t help but squash a bit before popping into the mouth.<\/p>\n

Of course, they were white, and this is black.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That also makes it stand out a bit from the surrounding buildings, which is nice, and it sits in a small recessed space with steps down and some lighting at night.<\/p>\n

It also serves a function, as the plinth it\u2019s on is the Dry Riser Inlet \u2013 essentially the point where firefighters will plug their hoses into to pump water into the building\u2019s firefighting pipes if they need to extinguish a fire inside the building.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Just don\u2019t assume it\u2019s an unusual Henry Moore sculpture when approaching it from the north side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Walking down a Chelsea street and I spied a lump of art, and a sign at the bottom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-20993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}