Figure: Curved, 2008

Stephen Cox RA (b. 1946)

RA Collection: Art

Figure: Curved, a torso fragment on a plinth, is made of Hammamat breccia, an Egyptian stone found in Waddi Hammamat in Upper Egypt, between Qift in the Nile Valley and Al Quasayr on the Red Sea Coast. It is one of several sculptures that Cox has made in Hammamat breccia since establishing a studio in Egypt in 1988, also including his 'Gemini' series.

In a recent artist’s statement Cox described the stone further:

'The stone is known variously as ‘antique Egyptian’ or ‘Hammamat breccia’ and is a conglomerate with bright coloured ‘pebbles’ and fragments of diverse stones … it has been recognised for its beauty since pre-dynastic times making its source one of the oldest, if not the oldest, ‘decorative’ stone quarries in the world. Its fame has yielded up stone to expeditions sent by early kings and pharaohs of Egypt as well as from distant lands including Xerxes and Darius of Persia and Philip of Macedon father of Alexander.'

Cox first established his reputation in Britain working in a Minimalist idiom before turning to carving upon moving to Italy in 1979 (he has spoken wanting to re-route his interests through a European tradition that had been negated by American modernism). In Italy he worked in Travertine and other soft marbles, but since setting up studios in India (1986) and Egypt (1988) Cox has chosen to work with some of the hardest rocks known to man, including Indian granite, imperial porphyry and Egyptian diorite. Cox has sometimes had to find these materials for himself-- he is the first sculptor since antiquity to have access to the Imperial Porphyry Quarries in the Eastern Mountains of Egypt—and this involvement in searching for his materials adds another dimension to Cox’s sculpture.