Much has been made of Moore’s love of the natural environment; his affirmation that “sculpture is an art of the open air”, and “its best setting and complement is nature”. The installation at Kew has taken Moore’s maxims to heart. As I approached the slippery, oval shapes of Large Two Forms (1969) – a work which shifts and changes depending on the angle you see it from – I was surrounded by a gaggle of fellow critics: geese, pecking at the grass in the sculpture’s shadow. One work, Sheep Piece (1971-2), which hints obliquely at the form of an ewe with her lamb, bears the patina and marks of the sheep which rubbed up against it when Moore placed it in a field near his home in Hertfordshire.
In parts of the show, Moore’s love of natural forms seems to run counter to the Victorian splendour of Kew. One of his bone-like pieces, Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae (1968-69), sits in front of the Palm House. Moore’s irregular, undulating tripartite form seems to echo – or mock – the pane-glass and wrought-iron symmetry of the older building.