Geoffrey Clarke’s sculpture Sirens has returned to find a permanent home at The Red House, nearly fifty years after it was first exhibited here. The work has been installed outside the public entrance to the Britten-Pears Library in a dramatic position on rising ground with the backdrop of the open skies above the Aldeburgh golf course.

The piece was first exhibited at The Red House in 1956 as part of a ‘Sculpture in the Open Air’ exhibition during the Aldeburgh Festival. The exhibition presented a compendium of Britain’s finest sculptors, with works scattered throughout the magical, leafy setting of The Red House garden. The Sirens occupied a commanding position, proud and watchful at the entrance to the house (see image). Yet Clarke envisaged them, cast monumentally in bronze, ‘near water on an exposed rocky promontory’ – to lure their mythical mariners to destruction. In strong winds, their forged iron heads would turn into the wind, where brass reeds inside the various tubes would emit ‘plaintive intriguing sounds’. The Sirens were one of Clarke’s last works in iron before he, like others, turned to new materials and a new formal language.

Born in 1924, Geoffrey Clarke studied at Preston School of Art from 1940 to 1941 and at Manchester School of Art from 1941 to 1942 before serving in the War with the RAF. He returned to his studying at Lancaster and Morecambe School of Arts and Crafts from 1947 to 1948, before attending the Royal College of Art in 1948, where he remained until 1952. In 1951 he was awarded a Royal College Travelling Scholarship and also received the silver medal at the Milan Triennale for a collaboration with Robin Day, the furniture designer. He returned to the Royal College from 1968 to 1973, where he was Head of Light Transmission and Projection Department.

Clarke’s first one-man show was held at Gimpel Fils Gallery, London, in 1952, the same year in which his work was included in the Venice Biennale. In 1965 he had a retrospective at the Redfern Gallery, London and his work was included in 'British Sculpture' in the 1960s exhibition at the Tate Gallery.

Similarly, he was selected for 'British Sculptors ‘72’, at the Royal Academy of Arts and for 'British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century', at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1981. Most of Clarke’s work is commission-based, cast in a foundry in a barn at his home in Suffolk.

• Find out more about Geoffrey Clarke at the Strand Gallery website
• View more of Geoffrey Clarke’s work at the Tate Gallery

Date: 25/11/05