Dave Stephens (sculptor)
Dave Stephens first came to public attention in the mid-1970s as a performance artist. After leaving Leeds Polytechnic, where he studied Fine Art under Jeff Nuttall, Roland Miller, and John Darling, he joined John Bull Puncture Repair Kit and toured Britain and Europe. On leaving John Bull, he teamed up with Ian Hinchliffe to form an ongoing performance relationship, which was a visual and verbal tour through the absurdist imaginations of the two performers. By the late 1970s, Stephens had separated from other performers to concentrate on his solo career. Often credited as a precursor to innovative alternative comedy, his solo work was characterized by unique and expressive monologues rooted in science fiction, Edgar Allan Poe, the theatre of the absurd, and Samuel Beckett. Stephens performed in over 100 venues throughout his career and toured most of Europe, as well as Canada and the USA.
Giving up performance in the mid-1980s, Stephens turned his attention to sculpture. His work from this period, and into the 1990s, explored the interplay between everyday objects, such as furniture, and the makeshift structures created by creatures like wasps. Much of this work consisted of large structures made from huge piles of small wood chips. He had solo exhibitions at venues such as the Laing Gallery in Newcastle, Worthing Museum, and the Economist Building, London.
Recent work focuses on how surface patterns affect overall structure. The pieces are broken down into small sections, but the surface pattern reunites them. His recent work has been described as exploring "the tensions between incidental encounters and economies of dispersal, which are increasingly relevant in a globalised world".
Throughout Stephens' career, there has been a consistent concern with how the small and the large depend on each other for form, structure, and texture. In his early performance work of the 1970s, words were used to create monologues with both literal and abstract meaning. Throughout the 1990s, his wood chip sculptures used the concept of structures arising from the need to support themselves. Similarly, his new series of work examines how mysteries can be associated with clues to punctuate their form.
Alongside his sculpture and solo projects, Stephens has collaborated on a series of film projects with Matt Page and experimental musician Steve Beresford. These experiments include stop-motion animation and real-time film, often exploring the production process of artworks. The films take the form of an amorphous visual experience, documenting the creation and development of an object.
Stephens continues to work and exhibit regularly, with exhibitions centred around his base in Phoenix, Brighton.
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