Fire Ladder, Air Ladder, Water Ladder, Earth Ladder, 1974

Joe Tilson RA (1928 - 2023)

RA Collection: Art

On free display in Dame Jillian Sackler Sculpture Gallery

Joe Tilson came to prominence in the 1960s as a Pop artist working with text and popular imagery (often derived from photographs or advertisements), but a move to a rural environment in 1970 brought about a radical change in his art. The body of work produced after the move was titled ‘ALCHERA’—another name for Dreamtime, the mythical Golden Age of Australian Aboriginals. Through making this body of work Tilson discovered parallels between his work and that of writers including Joyce, Pound, Yeats and Blake, and their own sources. His research led him to develop a circular mnemonic device incorporating the four cardinal points, the four Elements, the four Seasons, the lunar months, labyrinths ladders, words and symbols.

The series includes the four ladders in the RA collection, which Tilson referred to in his text ‘Notes for Alchera’: ‘the first steps for me in 1970 and 1971 were to take the idea of using fire in my work and to start a series of ladders and eggs and to begin the project of the Four Elements—FIRE, AIR, WATER and EARTH. Not in any anti scientific spirit, but because they are, and always will be, the four elements of imaginative experience’.

Tilson first made ladders with text burnt into them for an exhibition dedicated to artist and poet Kurt Schwitters (they were inscribed with words from a poem by Schwitters). Having trained as a carpenter and joiner before becoming an artist, Tilson was both skilled at woodwork and aware of its behaviour. These are sculptures which continue to evolve and subtly change as the wood ages.

Tilson’s ladders inscribed with the names of the four elements were first shown in Tilson’s 1976 exhibition ‘Alchera’: notes for country works at Marlborough Fine Art (in which they were listed as four separate works).

Further Reading

Tilson: Pop to Present, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, 2002

Tilson : 'Alchera' ; notes for country works, exh. cat., Marlborough Fine Art, 1976