Richard Deacon, Tate Britain

Turner Prize-winning sculptor Richard Deacon’s major new retrospective at the Tate Britain celebrates 40 abstract pieces from the 1980s to the present. Best known for provocative, large-scale pieces which today occupy a wealth of open-air sites across the world, he worked contemporaneously with a generation of artists including the acclaimed sculptor Bill Woodrow, to whom the Royal Academy paid homage with a retrospective in November 2013. But it’s often said that Deacon’s work is characterised by more formal aesthetics, which is to say that while his pieces boast bombastic curves and an irresistible tactility, together they create a sophisticated sculptural language of form, surface and mass. 

Deacon's work draws heavily on found materials. Take, for example, his Art for Other People series: a range of smaller-scale works from 1982 which are made of, among other things, everyday materials such as steel, cardboard and rubber, and home in on the perennial question of who art really belongs to and whether any one person can stake a definitive claim to a piece. 

But there's humour in his work too. A highlight for us in this 34-piece exhibition is Restless 2005 - a vast spiral of curling wood and steel which looks for all the world like a mountain of grated Parmesan cheese, or the surface of a fractious sea.

Other works, such as his Alphabet series, consist of  geometric forms – combinations of irregular hexagons and octagons which conceal ‘F’s, ‘G’s and ‘A’s – which give some insight into the systematic way Deacon works, and his propensity for producing works in series.

Deacon may not be a household name in the same way as, say, Damien Hirst, but he’s in the big league. He won the Turner Prize in 1987, and his public sculptures adorn landscapes around the world from Yonge Square Plaza in Toronto, to Redheugh Bridge in Gateshead and now, the Cornice of St. James’s Gateway, Piccadilly. For a gallery show that rewards contemplation, it’s a good ticket.