Inspired by the mass public flats characteristic of the Singaporean landscape during his 5-week residency, British sculptor Richard Deacon produced an impressive body of over 70 works in collaboration with the STPI workshop. As STPI’s first resident artist from the UK, Deacon worked outside his usual oeuvre of wood, glazed ceramic and galvanized steel in exploration of the print and paper medium. These new works are centered on two significant ideas: the concept of artist interference on material and the use of folding as a means of construction.
Housing features clusters of marbled polygonal columns looming upwards in their trajectory. Each constructed by the simple act of folding, they demonstrate Deacon’s ongoing intrigue with materiality and the constructive use of the void. A dynamic interaction is created between these sculptural works and his two-dimensional subjects. The patterned surfaces of his forms in Dog Days and Blackfriars Blocks seem to mimic the flux of life, negotiating balances between various states of dichotomy. In them, we see a concern for contemporary issues of community interaction, and perhaps even an insight as to how modern scientific theories propose to describe reality.
“Richard has moved seamlessly between sculpture and printmaking,” observes Emi Eu, Director of STPI. “These enigmatic works have emerged from the profound depths of his practice, reminding us all of the relativity of our understanding and knowledge.”
Going beyond convention, Beware of the Dog is a compelling testament to Deacon’s admirable and never-ending quest for experimentation and innovation. While his monumental sculptures are known to reach six-figure sums, the works created at STPI start at S$5,000 for edition pieces, accessible for budding collectors to acquire work by one of the most defining artists of our time.
Richard Deacon CBE (b. 1949, Bangor, Wales) has been a leading figure in British sculpture since the 1980s. He schooled at the Somerset College of Art, Tauton (1968), Saint Martin’s School of Art, London (1970-1973) and the Royal College of Art (1974-1977) where he obtained an MA in Environmental Media. Winner of the 1987 Turner Prize, Deacon is best known for his inventive use of materials to create works on a variety of scales, building subtle relationships between volume and space. In 2011, he installed an impressive sculptural work Upper Strut at the Louis Vuitton Island Maison in Singapore.
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