Signed verso, oil on Elm wood. Measuring almost 7 ft high, this is a major Tilson original, with provenance from Marlborough and exhibited at the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Joe Tilson, November 1973 - January 1974, no. 87. Branded verso 'TILSON'. In the early 1970s, Joe Tilson left the urban environment of London for the stillness of Wiltshire. At the same time, he turned his artistic attention to the construction of large wooden Cretan labyrinths, of which this is one of the earliest examples. A trained carpenter, Tilson was also fascinated by the symbolism of ancient cultures, especially the Ancient Greeks. In the labyrinth, he found both a rich conflation of mythological resonances and a vigorous formal design. Caerdroia is the Welsh word for Troy, which by a linguistic parallel – ‘troeau’ translates as ‘bends’ – was known as the ‘Castle of Turns’. Historically, Welsh shepherds were said to have created their own ‘caerdroia’, sevenfold mazes that were associated with sacred dances and ceremonial feasts. Tilson’s maze mimics these medieval turf versions, whose paths were delineated by raised earth rather than surrounded on either side by walls. The effect, along with Tilson’s painted arrows that lead the eye from centre to entrance, is to reiterate the paradox at the heart of the labyrinth, to which, as Michael Compton describes, there is a single, inevitable solution: ‘To follow the maze is always to arrive at the end which is already in view, but to take a rhythmically wandering path. It is a ritual picture of a journey or pilgrimage.’
