In 1966 Anthony Caro had a formative conversation with the American art critic Michael Fried. For the preceding six years he had been producing floor-standing sculptures which were entirely abstract. They rejected hundreds of years of sculptural orthodoxy by doing away with plinths altogether. It was an unprecedented move. They appeared to have no relation to the human form but Fried insisted that Caro’s abstracts still relied upon and drew attention to the body as the necessary container for aesthetic experience. These large, sprawling sculptures like Early One Morning (1962) and Prairie (1967) were “fixed in rapport to the height of the eye and the viewer’s perception of the floor”. If altered, “they would cease to be visually comprehensible.” [William Rubin, Anthony Caro, exh. cat. Museum of Modern Art (New York, 1975) p.75] The very nature of these floor sculptures, Fried claimed, rendered them ‘unplinthable’. Yet, Caro quickly discovered freestanding sculpture had certain restrictions. Working without plinths required his objects to be made large enough that they were not overlooked. And internal challenges aside, imitators and adopters of his approach to sculpture soon gathered behind him. Fried recognised exactly what had made such works daring and innovative and so, in discussion with the artist, he suggested a fresh approach to re-introduce a plinths and to further push the boundaries of Caro’s new sculptural vocabulary. Just as earlier works had demanded to be placed on the ground, so these new table pieces demanded to be placed on a raised surface. Many had protrusions below the surface line which dictated that they could not be sensibly displayed without a raised surface. They were fixed in relation to the viewer’s body and not maquettes designed for scaled-up sculpture; the artist asks his audience to approach them physically, to consciously orientate their body in relation to the specific and inalienable characteristics of his object. His emphasis is the condensing of felt experience and bodily sensations into a material object – as Fried writes: “If there is a single assumption behind Caro’s work it is that anything the body does or feels or undergoes can be made into art.” [Michael Fried, ‘Introduction’, Anthony Caro, exh. cat. The Arts Council, Hayward Gallery (London, 1969), p.14] The industrial, manufactured nature of Caro’s table pieces became increasingly apparent as his series progressed. The ‘Z’ series consisted of exactly one hundred works made in the relatively short period between 1978 and 1982. This astonishing output, with each work handled by the artist himself and a well-developed concept in its own right, is testament to Caro’s work-ethic and effusive creativity. He would complete such works alone in his home garage, typically on an evening using temporary welds, before taking them to his main studio in Camden Town where his assistants would secure the composition and Caro would make final edits. In Z-98, strips of steel take on blocky, flesh-like forms which take on a lively sense of movement and recall Caro’s earliest figurative sculptures which were modelled and cast in bronze or lead. However, when compared to Woman Waking Up (1955) for example, Z-98 fundamentally differs as the idiosyncratic qualities of its found materials, constructed through a collage-like process, ensure it is a work in its own right and could never be used for scaling up into one of Caro’s floor-standing sculptures. Despite their quantity, each of Caro’s table pieces is an independent and intimately involved process. They allow the viewer to approach the artist though process. “Making table sculptures is fun, very open and loose” Caro wrote [Caro quoted in Waldman, Anthony Caro, p.68]. The table pieces provided scope for the innovation and experimentalism that defined Caro’s career. Like a page from a draughtsman’s sketchbook, Table Piece Z-98 is one instance of Caro thinking-out new ideas, as it were, in three-dimensions, which he could then translate to other works in a variety of scales and contexts.