Richard Deacon is widely regarded as one of the principal British sculptors, best known for his innovative use of open form and his interest in materials and their manipulation. For more than two decades, Deacon has created unique sculptures in a wide range of materials such as laminated wood, polycarbonate, leather, cloth and ceramic. Working on both a domestic and monumental scale, his structures combine organic and biomorphic forms with elements of engineering. The sculptures are defined by the space within and around them, as much as the solidity of their shape. Deacon’s dissatisfaction with the materials commonly associated with outdoor works drove him to explore the use of clay on a large-scale, overcoming technical difficulties to produce a body of work such as Another Kind Of Blue (2005) or Flower (2004) that illustrates his fascination with the relationship between the physical and the material. Deacon’s preoccupation with methods of construction and materials expresses the continuous development of his ideas on sculpture, the interaction of surface, skin and structure, mass and volume, space and its relations. Deacon describes himself as a ‘fabricator’, for he neither carves nor models, but constructs using manufacturing or building techniques.