About exhibition
Solo Exhibition “Looking for Something” by Richard Deacon (Wales, 1945) to Open on 19 September at 7 PM at the DOTS Gallery in Lower Kalemegdan.
Richard Deacon, leading British sculptor and winner of numerous prestigious awards, will be presenting his works from five cycles created over the past several years at his first solo exhibition in Serbia.
During his decades-long career, Richard Deacon has distinguished himself with his recognisable approach to sculpting, repeatedly experimenting with the use of different materials such as laminated wood, polycarbonate, fabrics, and clay, as well as combining organic forms and technical elements. He has also established a mindful relationship with language as a structure within which he searches for and constructs meanings in his abstract works.
It is impossible to encapsulate Deacon’s creative opus under one stylistic label or theme. It is characterised by fluidity in approach shaped by the selection of materials at the very start of his creative process. Boldness in artistic experimentation and a distinctive drawing style are the only constants in the artist’s work.
Richard Deacon has been present in the visual identity of Belgrade for many years, mainly due to the sculpture From There to Here, installed on the Kalemegdan pedestrian bridge in collaboration with Serbian sculptor Mrdjan Bajic in 2019. However, until now, he has not held a solo exhibition in the Serbian capital. Following major exhibitions around the world, Richard Deacon will be presenting never-before-seen works at the DOTS Gallery.
The Belgrade audience will have the privilege of being the first to encounter multimedia works created under pandemic conditions, reflecting a return to one’s own resources. The exhibition will include works ranging from polyester prints (Second Motif), monumental wooden sculptures (UV84DC no. 18, 19, 20), ceramic works (Made of This), compositions resulting from woodcutting experiments (In the Woods), to a cycle of sculptures with undulating surfaces reflecting the artist’s contemplation in isolation on the theme of human footprints (Tread).
The curators of the exhibition are Mirjana Dušić and Ljuba Jovićević. The accompanying catalogue text was written by art historian Jasmina Čubrilo, designed by Isidora M. Nikolić. The exhibition is supported by the British Council and the British Embassy in Belgrade and will remain open until 7 December 2024.
BIOGRAPHY
Richard Deacon was born 15 August 1949 in Bangor, Wales. He studied at Somerset College of Art, Taunton, from 1968-69, St Martins School of Art, London, from 1969-72 and the Royal College of Art, London, from 1974- 77. He studied part-time at Chelsea School of Art, London, in 1978. From 1977-92 Deacon was a visiting lecturer in sculpture at various art schools, principally Central School of Art & Design, London; Chelsea School of Art, London; Sheffield City Polytechnic; Bath Academy of Art; and Winchester School of Art. He was visiting lecturer at Ateliers 63, Haarlem and Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (1989- 99), Guest Professor, Hochschule fur Angewande Kunst, Vienna (1995-96) and Guest lecturer, MA Programme, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, in 1998. Deacon was Professor at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, Paris 1999 – 2009 and Professor at the Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf 2009 - 2015.
Deacon’s first one-man show was held in 1978 at The Gallery, Brixton, London. This led to a string of solo exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, notably at the Riverside Studios in 1984, Tate Gallery, London, in 1985, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1988 and at Tate Gallery Liverpool in 1999. An exhibition of his work toured South America in 1996-97. He was one of three artists representing Wales at the 52nd Bienniale of Art in Venice in 2007. He has exhibited regularly at the Lisson Gallery, London, since 1983; at Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, since 1986; at LA Louver Gallery, Los Angeles since 1994; at Galerie Susanne Ottesen, Copenhagen since 1999; at Galerie Schulte, Berlin since 2003; at Galerie Ropac, Paris and Salzburg, since 2006.
Since 1981 Deacon has participated in many key group exhibitions throughout the world, including the 1983 Sao Paolo Bienniale, the 1985 Carnegie International, the 1989 Sydney Biennial, Dokumenta lX in 1992.
A first retrospective of his work, The Missing Part, was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Strasbourg in 2010. A major retrospective was shown at Tate Britain in February 2014 and a ten year survey, On The Other Side, at the Kunstmuseum Winterthur in 2015, this exhibition travelled to the Heydar Alyeev Centre in Baku Azerbaijan in 2015/16 and the Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany 2016. In 2016 Richard Deacon, Drawings & Prints 1968 - 2016, was shown at the Folkwang Museum in Essen concurrently with Under The Weather, an installation of new work, at the Thomas Schütte Skulpturstiftung in Neuss, Germany. In 2017 he made his first comprehensive museum exhibition in the USA, What You See Is What You Get at the Museum of Fine Art in San Diego California. Also in 2017, Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, Belgium mounted a show (Some Time) celebrating the restoration of a major work - Never Mind 1993 and putting it in the context of various other works by Deacon. 2017 also saw Deacon making his first show in Prague, Free Assembly, a large exhibition in the City Library and Art Gallery with accompanying catalogue.
Richard Deacon – In Between, a 90’ film by Claudia Schmidt was released in 2014.
His first public commission, Between The Eyes, was installed in Toronto, Canada in 1990. Since then he has completed commissioned works in New Zealand, Germany, France, Austria, United Kingdom, Spain, Holland, China, Singapore, the USA, Norway, Switzerland and Japan. Grove 2015, the most recent of these commissions was installed in 2016 for the Mitsubishi Development Corporation at Otemachi Station in Tokyo.
Deacon’s most extensive commission, in partnership with the Serbian artist Mrdjan Bajic, has been for the pedestrian bridge linking the Sava waterfront with Kalemegdan Fortress and the associated monumental sculpture ‘From There To Here’ finally completed and inaugurated in 2019.
Since the beginning of the 1970s, Richard Deacon has written extensively on his own practice and in relation to contemporary art and ideas. A selected collection - So, And, If, But; Writings 1970 – 2012 was published in 2014.
Richard Deacon won the Turner Prize, Tate Gallery, in 1987. In 1995 he was awarded the Robert Jacobsen Preize by Stiftung Würth. In 2013 he received Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Award and, in 2013, the Ernst Franz Vogelmann Prize for Sculpture, in Heilbronn, Germany 2017.
In 1998 he was elected a Royal Academician and, in 2010, elected a member of the Akademie Der Kunst in Berlin.
In 1997 he was awarded Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, France. Deacon was made CBE in 1999. In 2005 the University of Leicester awarded him an honorary doctorate. He was made an Honorary Fellow, University of the Arts, London in 2013 and elected Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Salzburg 2015 and made an Honorary Fellow, Plymouth College of Art, Plymouth 2017.
Richard Deacon lives and works in London.
