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This is one of three sculptures produced by Geoffrey Clarke for the 1963 Battersea Park Open Air Sculpture Exhibition. Resembling both a plough and a gun, it was cast in aluminium from an expanded polystyrene model, a method devised by Clarke that allowed for work to be produced quickly and cheaply whilst giving it a rough-hewn, organic appearance. It was purchased for Loughborough College of Education, one of the University’s predecessors, to mark the opening of Towers Hall in 1965. Clarke was one of eight sculptors exhibited at the Venice Biennale's British Pavilion in 1958. In a review of the Pavilion, Herbert Read described their work as creating a 'geometry of fear', and for a short period the group were considered the cutting-edge of contemporary British sculpture.