8 Shoeing Smith, Australia

Carl Andre was a key figure of Minimalism whose sculpture incorporates industrial materials and foregrounds spatial experience. From the mid-1960s, Andre increasingly departed from the traditional verticality and monumentality of sculpture by creating works that focused on the ground, horizontality, and flatness, even inviting audiences to walk on them. Throughout his career Andre also drew inspiration from the periodic table of elements, using and often combining different prefabricated industrial metals as a palette for his modular floor pieces.

In 1973, Andre participated in the group exhibition "Some Recent American Art" that traveled throughout Australia between 1973 and 1976. A few artists, including Andre, also traveled to the different venues to produce works in situ. 8 Shoeing Smith, Australia, belongs to this body of work, and was originally conceived to fill a certain length of the floor in the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. It consists of eight identically sized rectangular galvanized steel plates, arranged in a row with their long edges abutting each other, but in no specific order. Andre often used specific mathematical relationships to determine the dimensions of his works. In this case, each sheet measures 96 × 48 inches, with the length being twice the width. The overall length of the piece is a multiple of the dimensions of each individual plate (48 x 8 = 96 x 4). Over time, the plates have aged at different rates, and today their cool grey surfaces are scratched and scuffed from travel, installation, and reuse in different configurations.
In an interview with Phyllis Tuchman, Andre notably observed, "my things are conceived in the world... There’s always a location in mind, not necessarily a specific one, but, rather, a location in scale."[1] Andre’s responsiveness to place is borne out not just in the titles of his works that often note the place of their making, but also through his particular use of words and their associations. Here the unusual term "shoeing smith" may refer to the farriers who played a crucial role in the Australian Light Horse regiments during World War I, memorialized annually at events every spring.

[1] Phyllis Tuchman, "An Interview with Carl Andre," Artforum 8 (Summer 1970), p. 55.