This book surveys the work of Welsh artist Richard Deacon (born 1949), spanning the 1970s to the present. It includes never-before-published photographs of Deacon's earliest performances, along with many images from the artist's personal archive, and also looks closely at his sculptural practice, where biomorphic forms emerge as a dynamic blend of poetic metaphor and physical experience.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of Richard Deacon's work, beginning with his first pieces of the 1970s, including prints and archive photographs of his early performances, published here for the first time,right up to his newest works--over 100 pieces, brought together from numerous private collections and public museums, as well as from the artist's own archive.

A self-professed "fabricator", he has since the early 1980s explored the potential of numerous different materials, which include wood and metal, but also ceramic and resin, fabric and paper, vinyl and plastic. His sculptures, heirs to a Minimalist approach, conceal nothing of their technical procedures and constitute a universe of pervasively sensual and sometimes biomorphic forms.

Also included are a number of previously unpublished texts by the artist, which punctuate essays by Eric de Chassey, Julian Heynen, Phyllis Tuchman and Clarrie Wallis, offering a privileged insight into the development of his work.

The publication has been'put together in close collaboration with the artist; Deacon himself was responsible for the concept.