Stephen Cox RA

Ludlow, Meadow Gallery, Mappa Mundi, Sculpture by Stephen Cox, 2004
Bristol, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, Stephen Cox Sculptor: Origins and Influences, 2006
Ludlow, Ludlow Castle, The Meaning of Stone, 2011

In 1988, sculptor Stephen Cox was commissioned to create a work for the new Cairo Opera House. As part of this request, he was granted access to the ancient quarries of Mons Porphyrites in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, making him the first man to quarry there since the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD.

The present work is carved from the raw rock quarried in Mons Porphyrites and as the artist observes bears the marks of Roman Imperial labour with indications of cut lines and splitting fissures inflicted centuries ago. The artist has continued to carve and polish the stone and cleanse it of impurities to expose the rich purple and red porphyry, creating a striking dialogue between the past and the present: for Cox, Dreadnought is an emblem of ‘how sculpture and architecture begins’, with a history of carving embedded in the ‘passage and flow of the sculpture’.

The name of the work was conceived early on in its development. As Cox began to work on the present stone, he saw a newsreel of a First World War Dreadnought battleship rediscovered at the bottom of the sea: the form of the weathered battleship, its gnarled prow still intact, bore a handsome resemblance to his piece of raw rock. ‘Dreadnought’ therefore and ‘search for the hidden stone’ is suggestive of the artist’s focus on engaging with history and the close attention he pays to the achievements of the past. The search for the hidden stone finds prodigious representation in the artist’s use of Imperial porphyry.

Another work by the artist, Chrysalis, of the same medium and size to Dreadnought, was purchased by the Tate Gallery, London, in 1992.