Interior Space (Peperino II), 1999, Peperino di Viterbo
In the late 1990s, Cox embarked on a new series of sculptures called Interior Spaces which also marked a recognition of both his minimalist roots and his fascination with the Italian Renaissance and antiquity. These sarcophagi-like boxes are a powerful evocation of the after-life, but also of silence and non-material or metaphysical space. Cox used a whole range of materials in this series from Bardiglio marble and porphyry (Shrine, now at the National Gallery) to Travertino (Terra degli Etruschi, now at Waddeston), which culminated in an exhibition in the Piazza del Duomo in Siena in 1999. Made out of peperino, a form of tuffa, Peperino II is effectively a piece of Italian ground transposed to South Shropshire. The sculpture is made from an ancient block of stone which had been lying in a Viterbo quarry for centuries. The stone had been rejected by the quarrymen as unfit for carving due to its irregularity. To Cox however, the presence of blobs of different matter suggested the stone’s own history as it was spewed from the earth in successive flows of lava.