Rebecca Warren uses unfired clay as the basic material for her recent sculptural objects, often incorporating found elements and neon. From this raw substance she fashions crude, awkward shapes that suggest barely discernible forms. The plinths or shelves that support them provide a reference to sculptural syntax and in some works there have been allusions to the ‘plastic dynamism’ of Umberto Boccioni or the gestural cement and ceramic works of Lucio Fontana. ‘The Emperor’ is an amorphous mass that reads as a collection of intertwined forms, as bodies writhing in agony or entwined in ecstasy or as protruding limbs and members. The organic nature of the forms and the sense of tactility is emphasised by the peculiar lustre she applies to the unfired clay. The wickedness of flesh was a common subject in allegorical still life, suggested by splayed animal carcasses, and art historical debate has made much of the erotic allusions of phallic shapes. Warren toys with such ambiguities of meaning, using cartoon forms and almost slapstick techniques to construct a complex argument for the potential of form.

Still Life, British Council 2000