Bottle Green Republic

Richard Deacon (b.1949) is a leading British sculptor and former Turner Prize winner, and has been the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Britain in 2014. Throughout his career, Deacon has employed a range of materials including laminated wood, stell, and glazed ceramic.

Bottle Green Republic belongs to a series of ceramic pieces constructed from cut lengths of clay, assempled in seemingly improbably ways. Each linear section has a precise yet individual geometry, and meets its neighbours through a minimal number of surface contact points. Unified by a single glaze colour, the sculptures recall Suprematist paintings. In their assertion of materiality and their suggestion of something engineered, their greater affinity is perhaps, however, with Constructivism. Their evocation of the Revoluntionary Russian avant-garde is further echoed in the title of the series, Republic.

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In common with many of Deacon's sculptures, the works in the Republic series emphasise structure, using component pieces to construct form and to delineate space. The irreversible nature of the ceramic firing process nevertheless makes them distinct from Deacon's work in other materials, where the possibility of disassembly often remains apparent. Bottle Green Republic, a powerful and dynamic work from teh series, holds particular interest for its use of a transparent glaze that has the capacity to emphasise structure by partially revealing the underlying surface. It also complements the architectonic character of the work through its association with architectural ceramics and tiles.