Deborah was invited by the European Commission to hold a solo exhibition at their London offices at 8 Storey's Gate in October 2007. Here is Peter Davies's introduction to the exhibition catalogue.

The sculpture of Deborah van der Beek
 

Deborah van der Beek's sculpture stands out for its compelling mix of potent thematic content and emotive, expressive handling of form. The roughly modelled potmarked surfaces recall Giacometti, Richier or Cézar, sculptors of the post-war existential movement, yet tied to figurative tradition in France. Van der Beek follows their feeling for spatial, gravitational compression, that sense of form within an infinite void. In place of the generic, however, van der Beek posits specific figurative symbols of mythic or realist power, historical import and ongoing cultural relevance. The contingent formal pressure extends to subject-matter for the British sculptor, van der Beek using the theme of women warriors or of outlaws on the run to give her work greater metaphorical weight.

Van der Beek's expressionism is evident too on the flat plane of large pastel drawings, which are two-dimensional graphic rehearsals for bronze images in the round. The immediacy of the drawn image captures the instant gesture and animated movement of say a galloping horse. She refers to pieces like Antiope, Amazon Queen as "almost like drawn images that are standing up… I want movement in them." The drawings therefore relay the inimitable touch of the sculptor where enhanced feeling for weight, volume and physical texture is never compromised by the slick superficialities of graphic design. These drawings feature the 19^th century Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, Amazon warriors, an Irish fertility goddess as well as a series of bovine and equestrian subjects. A sympathy for the downtrodden or victimised fulfils a longstanding family interest in politics (despite becoming a successful and well-known businessman, van der Beek's father was a one-time ideological communist).

Studying at Central St Martins, Cambridge and Cardiff, van der Beek went on to raise a family; she wrote and illustrated children's books before belatedly coming to sculpture in the late 1990s. Based throughout this time at a National Trust house in Lacock, near Bath, where she has had the space both to sculpt and display work in extensive gardens, van der Beek has pursued her themes with sculptural intelligence and sensitivity registered through sympathetic handling of materials. Her preferred method involves modelling in clay or ciment fondu around an armature often ambitiously-proportioned monuments that test to the limit what is structurally possible. Sand casting from moulds at foundries like the renowned Pangolin near Stroud, Castle Fine Arts in Nailsworth and Ridgeway Sculpture near Wendover yields editions from a handful to anything up to a dozen in number.

Modern British sculpture since Gaudier, Epstein, Underwood, early Moore and Hepworth has conducted a significant dialogue with ethnic and primitive sources while continuing a radical programme of formal modernity realised through carving in wood or stone, modelling clay or plaster or construction in wood, or more pertinently, steel. It has won a significant international niche within which van der Beek creates new variations within a specifically contemporary, even post-modern message. For van der Beek, the human figure or animal forms she trades in, while providing academic lessons in anatomical perfection is impregnated with the timeless power of archetypal, mythic or historical symbol.

The dozen or so bronzes and accompanying drawings in the current context present legend and myth as a cogent moral reminder to the narrowing vision of modern, secular, materialistic society. Sheela-na-gig, a reclining, erotically-charged figure based on an Irish fertility goddess, a series of Amazon warrior women from classical antiquity and the Ned Kelly images tell stories of powerful women as liberators (Boadicea, Joan of Arc and, depending on your political tastes, Margaret Thatcher) or of the marginalised outsider. In contrast to Frink's generalised, male (van der Beek's are predominantly female), Marini-influenced horsemen, the younger sculptor's works relate to specific cultural sources and are modelled with a fierce, fidgety fingering that threatens to open solid anatomical form to space and light. Smooth finish is anathema for an ambitious and energetic sculptor who refers to the "corrosive" space impinging on landscape-like potmarked surfaces.

The formal relevance of van der Beek's sculpture is therefore complemented by its pertinent contemporary thematic content; the tautness and fearful geometry of the 'Ban the Bomb' era gives way to a new post-millennial anxiety to do with flood plain, violent storm or melting ice cap. Ecological concerns inform the large centaur The Fifth Horseman. In Un Homme Qui Dort and the inert full-length standing figure Gaia large headdresses become one with the fruit bowl in a sumptuous still life, the stacked cornucopia perhaps symbolising the earth's riches and the need to respect the fecundity of nature.

The symbolic allusion to current day problems like pollution, climate instability and ozone depletion becomes even more evident in a large recent bronze taking to gigantic proportions the idea of fruit as "metaphor for both the abundance and transience of life", as van der Beek recently put it. The World Gone Pear-Shaped is disrupted by a large bitten cavity, which sets up a cogent analogy with the notion of an ecologically-pillaged planet; closer inspection reveals a scoured surface of debris impressed, embedded or scraped into the original clay. Toy cars, fossils, coins, tools, insects, leaves, nuts and other manmade or natural bric-a-brac allude to both anthropomorphic relics and modern industrial waste. As in Cézar, middle-period Paolozzi and other anthropomorphic moderns, subtle textural surface inflections carry loaded associations giving the object a moral as well as aesthetic value.

Van der Beek's variations on the Ned Kelly theme include creative essays in scale and alternatively inert or animated movement. The Ned Kellys, in editions of seven to nine, range from the small Bush Angel I, a reference to Marini's Angel of the City in the Guggenheim in Venice, to Glenrowan Outlaw. The standard cylindrical masks, which give the work a sinister surreal quality, are cast from tomato purée tins with incised linear slits like mediaeval look-outs. These smooth anonymous helmeted heads contrast with the roughness of finish elsewhere and, together with the rifle, represent a cheeky metaphoric use of found objects as part of the formal language. In the majestic Ned Kelly Outlaw , the stationary horse and rider stand like a guardian or sentinel, thereby erasing the distinction between hunter and hunted.

This versatile, questing sculptor, who uses straightforward animal subjects for their own sake, creates successful horse or bull bronzes depicted in a variety of poses ranging from the heavy gravity of Running Bull (which recalls the work of Robert Clatworthy) to the nimble stretch of Rolling Horse and rearing climb of East of the Sun, West of the Moon. Powerfully modelled and sensitively observed, these single animal forms elicit physical power, pure instinct and an unselfconscious sense of an animal's place in nature. Van der Beek reminds us of our link to the animal world and in so doing also raises the human obligation towards a higher purpose. In this she creates sculptures of a grounded decorative power, sculptural integrity and spiritual significance.

Peter Davies
August 2007

Peter Davies is a painter and critic. His books include Michael Kenny sculpture (1997), The sculpture of John Milne (2000), After Trewyn (2001), John Huggins sculpture (2006) and St Ives art 1975-2005 (2007).