WORK OF THE WEEK: Edward Allington, From the Sex of Metals II, 1989
“Sculpture is looking at real things by making real things. It is making poetry with solid objects.”
Edward Allington
From the Sex of Metals II, 1989
Galvanised steel
108 x 160 x 230 cm
42 ½ x 63 x 90 ½ in.
British sculptor, writer and educator, Edward Allington was born in Cumbria in 1951. His open and experimental practice was characterised by a meditation of the real, authentic and true. He used familiar visual motifs inspired by the classical works of ancient Greece; fragments of columns, pediments and decorated cornices, to address the relationship between memory and recognisability, exploring how these forms are ever present and enduring in contemporary consciousness.
From the Sex of Metals II belongs to a series of four sculptures that Allington made from 1989 to 1990. It represents a concerted interrogation into the power of sculpture, and how it should be encountered. He writes “Us sculptors, we make things and generally speaking they travel around and the context changes… That’s what I really like about sculpture. You make this thing and maybe the structure of it is really banal but what you do with it, changes things completely.”
Made from galvanised steel, From the Sex of Metals II is one of only six freestanding works made by Allington that can be displayed outside. In the context of its placement here at Roche Court Sculpture Park, its industrial nature is juxtaposed with the natural landscape, whilst at the same time its form and protruding scrolls echo classical civilisation. From the Sex of Metals III and IV (1990) have recently been acquired by Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
After attending the Lancaster School of Art from 1968 to 1971, Allington studied at Central School of Art and Design until 1974 and subsequently at the Royal College of Art between 1983 and 1984. He was a central figure in the ‘New British Sculpture’ movement in the 1980s, alongside contemporaries such as Antony Gormley, Richard Deacon, Bill Woodrow, Tony Cragg and Alison Wilding to name a few.
He received several honours for his work, including the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition Prize in 1989, and in 1991-93 was a Gregory Fellow in Sculpture at the University of Leeds.
Like his sculpture, Allington’s approach to writing was a discursive practice. Over his career he contributed a number of notable texts for Frieze magazine, including Labours of Love: True Confessions of a Spare Parts Freak and Dream Machines. In 1993, he published a series of polemic essays entitled Method for Sorting Cows, that support the notion of sculptural pluralism and multiple readings within the discipline.
Edward Allington's work has been exhibited widely, with solo exhibitions at the Leeds City Art Gallery (1992); The Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (1993); Yorkshire Sculpture Park (1997) and the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2019). In 2021, the New Art Centre held a major exhibition of his work in the park and gallery here at Roche Court, alongside sculptor Nika Neelova.
Allington completed major public commissions across the UK and Europe, including but not limited to Fallen Pediment (Piano) at the Cass Sculpture Foundation, Goodwood, West Sussex in 1994; Cochlea at Jesus College, Cambridge in 2000 and The Algorithm at University College Hospital, London in 2005. In 2015, he was awarded an AHRC Network Grant for his project Modern Japanese Sculpture, a collaborative research network with the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds and Musashino Arts University, Tokyo. From 2000 until his death in 2017, Allington was Professor and Head of Graduate Studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.
Edward Allington’s work is included in numerous major public collections, including the Tate Modern, London; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, USA; Nagoya Prefectural Museum, Japan; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Fondation Maeght, Saint Paul de Vence, France; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; the British Museum, London; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield; Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.