Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 2016

Stephen Cox has six pieces in the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition this year:

Gemini III is a sculpture consisting of a base and two abstract figures carved from the same block of stone. The stone is known variously as ‘antique Egyptian’ or ‘Hammamat breccia’ and is a conglomerate with bight coloured ‘pebbles’ and fragments of diverse stones: granites, marbles, quartzes, hornblende and hematite of yellow, red, black, pink and white strewn in a greenish matrix. 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.

Two recent offering bowls formed from Egyptian breccia are engraved with typical images drawn from the the walls of the valley of the quarries.

The original graffiti was wide ranging in its subject matter. It depicted inventories of men and provisions that were tallied by the masters as well images of idols and offerings some simple, others technically very accomplished. Some of the imagery expressed the yearnings of lonely men in a savage desert environment.

The drawings Louis Khan: Siva / Kali, Black, Orange & Gray are inspired by the magnificent Indian Institute of Management designed by the great architect Louis Khan at Ahmedabad in Gujarat.