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 ichard Deacon has been one of the most talked about names in contemporary sculpture for over 20 years. Employing a breathtaking array of materials, from galvanized steel, to laminated wood, to glazed ceramic, Deacon continues to create ground breaking work on a variety of scales. His sculptures twist and curve gracefully, impossibly contradicting our preconceptions about the materials used to make them. Many of the works contain or surround voids, emphasizing Deacon's fascination with the subtle interaction between material and negative space. In addition to his sculptural works, Deacon produces drawings and is a prolific writer and public speaker.
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Richard Deacon
Mammoth
1989
Aluminium
210 x 485 x 346 cm
Private collection |
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Born in Wales in 1949, Deacon moved around frequently with his family as a child. A spell in Sri Lanka in the 1950's provided some of his earliest experiences with sculpture, when he would discover the power of positive and negative space. While studying Deacon worked predominantly in the field of performance-based art. From 1974-1977 Deacon moved to the Royal College of Art, London where he completed an MA in environmental media and studied art history part-time at the Chelsea College of Art. In the early 1980's he began to exhibit internationally, as a central figure of “New British Sculpture.” The name referred to a loose group of sculptors, also including Tony Cragg, Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor, who were known for their inventive use of materials found in post-industrial, consumerist British society, as well as the conceptual rigor of their usually abstract work. Members of the group found tremendous critical and financial success, which continues to this day. Deacon's innovative work was rewarded in the form of the 1987 Turner Prize, and his career since then has fulfilled the promise he showed as a younger artist.
Today, Deacon is represented by numerous galleries in Western Europe and the U.S., amongst others the Lisson Gallery in London and the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York. He has exhibited his work at a wide variety of prestigious institutions, including the Tate St. Ives and the MOCA in Los Angeles. In addition to gallery and museum shows, Deacon has completed a number of public projects which can be seen around the world, from the Ocean Plaza in Beijing to Zaragoza, Spain. His achievements in art are such that he has been officially decorated by two countries. The French ministry of culture awarded Deacon the Chevalier de l’ordre des Artes et Lettres in 1996. In 1999 he was recognised in the New Year’s Honours List and awarded the CBE for his contribution to the arts in Britain. Richard Deacon lives and works in London.
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Richard Deacon
Laocoon
1996
Steamed beechwood, wood, aluminium, steel bolts
430 x 364 x 357 cm
Private collection |
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Art Interview: You were born in Bangor, Wales in 1949. How long did you live in that area?
Richard Deacon: My father was in the military, so we moved around a lot. The reason I was born in Bangor is my mother wanted to stay with my grandmother when I was born. We left when I was four weeks old, though we visited my grandmother in Wales every summer until I was five.
Art Interview: What did your parents do for a living?
Richard Deacon: My mother was a doctor, and my father was a military pilot.
Art Interview: That’s why you were travelling so much when you were younger? Was your mother working for the military as well?
Richard Deacon: Yes, until she got married. She was a Medical Major in the Indian army during the war. In fact, my parents met on a boat travelling to India, and they later got married there. After my mother came back from India, she worked as a locum doctor, from time to time.
Art Interview: Did your parents have an influence on your decision to become an artist?
Richard Deacon: No, not that I was aware of, but they didn’t oppose it either.
Art Interview: Did your travels as a child have an influence on your creativity?
Richard Deacon: I think travelling as a child had a big influence on the way I am as a person, but it is hard to know to what extent that impacted my creativity. When I was five, my family moved to Sri Lanka, and we spent two and a half years there. The difference between 1950s UK and Sri Lanka was pretty extraordinary. That time provided many experiences for me, which were rich and extremely formative.
Art Interview: In 1968 you did your foundation course at Somerset College of Art in Taunton, Somerset, England and took courses taught by John Hilliard, Ian Breakwell and Rose Finn-Kelcey, who were actually just a little bit older than yourself?
Richard Deacon: Yes, they were not very much older than me at all, but they did seem much more so at the time.
Art Interview: How did the late 1960s help to inform your conceptual intellect as an artist?
Richard Deacon: I went to Somerset College of Art fairly naive about non-UK based art practices. There was a trip during the foundation course to London to see Art of the Real, an American loan show, and I remember seeing a vertically stacked Donald Judd piece and having absolutely no idea what I was looking at, though I have a very crisp visual memory of it. There were also a couple of Frank Stella's in that show - not black ones, but the coloured ones - and those I could understand more. It was a strong experience. Fairly shortly after that, though, I had a much clearer handle on Judd, after seeing more reproductions of his work. Art Forum wasn’t available in Somerset College of Art's library, but it was in St. Martins' library. I felt that Pop was a new generation, and was kind of where it was at. I was reading AD Magazine, so I knew a bit about architectural practices and Pentagram, those kinds of conceptual practices. In terms of conceptual artwork, that was a blank to me until I got to London.
After the foundation course at Somerset, when I went to St. Martins School of Art, it took me awhile to get up to speed. What was happening in the United States in the 1960s had passed me by. But by the beginning of the 1970s, I was well aware of minimal and post-minimal conceptual work.
Art Interview: Did you find professors who were supportive of your work When you entered St. Martins?
Richard Deacon: I was in a very intensive new program at St. Martins that bred a great deal of interaction between its students and staff. This was sometimes positive and sometimes negative, but it forced us not to look to external models for our work, but to internalize the individual practices we applied to our work so that we might then recognize those solutions in works of other artists. I feel the course was successful because it taught us to think for ourselves and also to think through other models of practice.
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Richard Deacon
Stuff Box Object: Large Photograph #10,
1970-71
Black and white photograph
27.8 x 35.4 cm
Private collection |
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Art Interview: You were focusing on performance there, is that correct?
Richard Deacon: I did a lot of performances, yes, that is correct. But, all the performances that I did were basically questions about materials and concerned with the linearity of time, the impact of one's actions in the world, and the impact to the agent who made those actions.
Art Interview: Did performances like Stuff Box lay a foundation for your current work?
Richard Deacon: Well, in some ways, yes. They raise questions about materiality and also open up the various ways in which things can take on meaning. The kinds of action you make on a material can become less instrumental and more about the relationship to meaning.
Art Interview: How has writing evolved into an integral part of your practice?
Richard Deacon: At St. Martins, a lot of the work I did was initially propositional, and my writing contains both supposition and proposition. I also became dissatisfied with photography as a way of recording events. I began, through the medium of description, to start recording my actions over an extended period, using writing to de-privilege the photographic moment. I would record an action by describing it, rather than by filming it or by using still photography. I would occasionally still record using still photography, but in between the various moments that are photographed, I wrote and sometimes also described the photograph. Writing was, in the early stage, closely linked to the practice, but the two things kind of fell apart from each other. At some point, I found writing as a documentary vehicle to be a bit cumbersome and wanted the objects to stand for themselves. My writings in turn became separated and more essay based or critically based.
Art Interview: What led you to attend the Royal College of Art for your MA? Did you find a nurturing environment there?
Richard Deacon: I left St. Martins, and I was not in an art school for two years. I felt incomplete. The Department of Media Art in the Royal College of Art seemed to offer a place for someone who had my kind of skill set, which was located in relationship to sculpture but slightly peripheral to it. By the time I got to the Royal College of Art, I had made a decision that I wanted to pursue an object-based practice. I liked the people in the environmental media department better than the people from the sculpture department. What I found interesting was that all of us were doing very different kinds of things. We not only looked at what they were, but to who was doing what in relationship to our own individual history and also in relationship to the context we imagined ourselves to be in. Each of us had constructed very different ideological apparatus to describe our activities, and yet we still had to find ways to talk to each other. In the sculpture department, you could assume you were doing sculpture because you were in the sculpture department, but I couldn’t just assume I was doing environmental media because, that category doesn’t exist.
Art Interview: Did you have a difficult time finding your place as an artist once you left college?
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Richard Deacon
Installation at Brixton Studio, 1978 |
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Richard Deacon: In my third year at the Royal College of Art, I began looking for studio space outside of the school where I could continue my work. There was an abandoned factory near where I was living, and I began exploring the possibility of using part of it as a studio space, and then it turned out that the entire building was available. I contacted Acme asking them if they would be interested in administering it as a studio block, and they were. So, before finishing at the Royal College of Art, I spent my time building this studio complex and actually working for Acme. It was very important to me to have a studio. I also persuaded the other artists involved that it would be interesting to have a communal space there that was already paid for in our rent that we could use as a gallery or a showing space. The market was relatively dead in the 1970s. So, our idea was, “if we can’t go to the world, the world will come to us” by having a gallery space. I did a show in this gallery space before I left for America. I showed the works that I had done in the previous five years, which I thought were worth seeing. I was then fortunate enough to go to the United States for a year, but kept the studio going while I was away. Since my wife had a scholarship, I didn’t have to earn money while I was there.
Some artists from the studio like Bill Woodrow, Wolfgang Koethe, and Jean Luc Vilmouth, and I created a program of exhibitions when I came back from the States. There was some interest at the time for sculpture in the UK, tied in with the shows Tony Cragg and others were doing in various places. The activities in the studio complex inspired a certain amount of interest. Objects and Sculpture at the ICA was enormously successful, and that had a big impact on how the works were perceived critically.
Art Interview: Did you have an active part in bringing critics into the space?
Richard Deacon: Yes, I have always gotten on well with certain critics. Both Michael Newman and Lynne Cooke were interested. There was a lot of discussion going on. The market remained the same for a couple of years. Saatchi came along in 1984 and bought a whole lot of my work. Then the market started to change for me.
Art Interview: How were you surviving financially when you were running the studio? Did you have a part-time job?
Richard Deacon: I was teaching part-time in Winchester, Sheffield Central School of Art and at Bath Academy. So, I was doing three or four days of teaching per week.
Art Interview: You have taught consistently throughout your career. Why would an established artist such as yourself teach?
Richard Deacon: There are two reasons I like teaching. It’s a good way to not become self-obsessed. Students are very interested in you as a famous artist for about five minutes, and then they are interested in what you can give them. They are interested in their own work. I also happen to like 20 to 30-year-olds as an age group. I get on well with them, and I like their energy and the way they see the world. I have taught both studio art and art history. I had a professorial role in Paris and now in Dusseldorf, and I like that system.
Art Interview: In 1983, you had a solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery. How did you develop a relationship with them?
Richard Deacon: Through Tony Cragg. After Objects and Sculpture, Tony Cragg recommended Nicholas Logsdail to show my work. Nicholas was already somewhat familiar with the works.
Art Interview: Was Lisson Gallery a catalyst for your career?
Richard Deacon: Well, I would say I am the catalyst for the gallery. I don’t particularly give priority to Lisson as the most important factor. Obviously, Lisson has a different kind of audience that I can't reach because, as an individual, I don't have access to European museums or to collectors.
Art Interview: In 1983, your career began in earnest. You were involved in the Sao Paulo Biennale, the Serpentine Gallery, and the Tate Gallery. You suddenly became very active. I'm curious, what factors supported that change?
Richard Deacon: I think it was a whole number of factors that came together, rather than any particular one. It was important to have the support of people like, Nick Serota, Muriel Wilson from the British Council, and Nicholas Logsdail from Lisson Gallery. Nick Serota was the selector for the Sao Paulo Biennale. Muriel Wilson was both from the British Council and also the buyer that year for the Arts Council. Michael Newman’s articles were quite influential, particularly the ones in Art in America. So, the Americans started to become interested.
Art Interview: Did you experience a learning curve in regard to production with the increase of the number of exhibitions you were involved in?
Richard Deacon: I was working on about two pieces a year until 1982 when I produced a great deal more by creating a group of small works. By 1984 I have gotten someone to help me make something for the first time. A set of studio practices was established by then but money was particularly tight. 1983 and 1984 were extremely risky times, financially. Exhibitions were in demand, but I had no idea where the money would come from. I felt that I had to fulfil my commitments, and I hoped there would be some financial income coming back. When you have no money, any debt is a big debt and I had a young family to tend to. I was very fortunate to have a financial bank manager who tolerated the state of things and was willing to take a chance on me, as I didn't have a big overdraft. I was writing to him on a monthly basis, giving him assurance that things were good and that I was working. He enabled me to transfer my crippling anxiety on to him. It is very hard to think creatively when you have those kinds of money worries. It is a disastrous for an artist if you think you must make things to sell.
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Richard Deacon
Between The Eyes
1990
Zinc sprayed steel, stainless steel, cement and granite face base
800 x 1900 x 700 cm
Yonge Square International Plaza, No. 1 Yonge Street, Toronto, Canada |
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Art Interview: Were you aware consciously or subconsciously that you were heading towards a great career?
Richard Deacon: I have considerable amount of self-confidence, so yes. If I had decided to be too cautious, I would have regretted it.
Art Interview: How did winning the Turner Prize affect you?
Richard Deacon: Actually, what was more important was being nominated in 1984. That changed the way my works were being perceived. Winning the Turner Prize, in 1987, didn't seem to change things for me because it was after a period when I had done an enormous amount.
Art Interview: In 1990, you received your first public commission to do the work Between the Eyes. That is a very different type of work for you.
Richard Deacon: Yes, although I had done some work outdoors at the Serpentine Gallery, which was manufactured on a large scale.
Art Interview: Was it a big change in process for you to actualise public commissions?
Richard Deacon: There was a big change in terms of scale. Although I had made large objects in the studio before, and I have a structural engineer helping me, in retrospect, I think it was a more significant a change than it appeared at the time. There were more people and details involved. It was supposed to be at the site for a longer time period, and it addressed a very different type of audience. I did an entire group of works between 1990 and 1993 in Toronto, Vienna, Auckland, Villeneuve d’Ascq, Krefeld and Plymouth. I had to learn very quickly how to respond to the site, how to ask questions within a specific context, and how to talk to different sorts of makers. Obviously, the most important part is the relationship of the work to the site and the idea of permanence.
Art Interview: Do you feel that there are inherent differences in scale?
Richard Deacon: Well, there shouldn't be. But, it is certainly true that the group of works I made in the early 1990s were the biggest that I have ever done. At some point, I started to wonder if it was necessary to make large objects for outdoors and about the role of scale in making public works. I began thinking of much smaller scale works, like the ceramics. But to begin with, I made off site models. It is very important for me to make objects that are specific to the site. The big change from studio practice is that for most studio work I produced I would choose works to a suit a particular exhibition space, though making the work always preceded that. Whereas with public commissions, the site was an integral part of the way I thought about it from the start.
Art Interview: Have you experienced contrasting situations with the various public commission boards that you have worked with?
This oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Richard Deacon on May 19, 2010. The interview took place over the telephone between Berlin, Germany and London, England. Brendan Davis conducted this interview for Art Interview Online Magazine. Max Staley and Peter Reiling wrote the introductory text at the beginning of this interview.
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