After 1998

Curator: Walking into this gallery, you're confronted with "After," a 1998 sculpture by Richard Deacon. What's your first reaction? Editor: It feels… skeletal. Like the remains of some massive, gentle creature that’s curled up to rest. There's something quite melancholy about it, and also incredibly vulnerable. Curator: Deacon often uses these biomorphic forms, exploring the interplay between inside and outside, form and emptiness. Editor: Absolutely. The geometry of it, though abstract, gives it an architectural quality, too, a sense of being a framework. The repetition of line in its modernist approach reminds me of issues of gender, visibility and performativity, creating frameworks and lines of sight and power relations within. Curator: He works extensively with wood. There's a real warmth and fluidity despite the angular lines. He is trying to play with notions of inner life being exposed. The title itself makes one ponder of loss, death and consequence. Editor: It does. It makes me wonder what came "before." I love that open ended questions in sculpture and installations make way to ponder about different narratives within society. Who decides what matters? What lives get memorialized? Curator: Exactly, there's a lot of "who gets to speak" embodied by how "After" fills, occupies, this gallery. This particular work feels very honest about its construction; all of the joints and fixings are visible, making us aware of the process of its creation. Editor: Yes, the structural elements become aesthetic ones. Almost like exposing the inner workings of an institution to critique its inherent biases. This appeals to my inner activist who deeply thinks of questions around accessibility. Curator: Perhaps he means to make us question ourselves to see and expose and share our vulnerability with one another, so that more voices will come "After." Editor: A worthy invitation for our contemporary climate. This wooden skeleton invites viewers to reflect on issues of materiality, power and identity politics that are currently at the forefront of political activism.