RICHARD DUCKER ABOUT THE ARTIST
	Richard Ducker has been a practicing artist since completion of his MA at Goldsmiths' College, London in 1991.  He lives and works in London. "The use of cement in Richard Ducker’s most recent sculptures emphasises a kind of death, or a modernist monumentality, but the objects it coats and with which it is juxtaposed evoke nostalgia, myths soaked in dreams, and fairy tales gone wrong. If a domestic interior is evoked, it is one in which homely things have sprouted aggressive appendages, grown unexpected textures, or multiplied into viral aggregates, as if to embody the nightmares that commodity fetishes might dream of if they fell asleep. Like Proust’s madeleine dipped in tea, they evoke memories and sensations according to a logic that combines cultural association with phenomenological fantasies of sensual experiences, often clashing within the same piece. In Death Star (and Baby), for example, the familiar shape of plastic bottles is made strange by a coating of intensely black flock, at once attractive and repellent in its soot-like impurity, contrasting the smooth sensation of drinking ‘spring water’, with the gagging artificiality of spray-flock; we are reminded with a jolt how toxic our obsession with purity and cleanliness really is. Lots of fluids seem to run through the work: sucked in by a fur-lined, mouth-like creature with the energy of a crack addict; apparently running between a suitcase – travel, escape and refreshing holidays – and a concrete block that seems to be feeding off (or to?) a tree that might have been killed or perhaps re-energised by artistic usage. In Monument for England a bird, landed on a rather aggressive plinth endowed with too many hooks, seems to have been petrified by its drink. Sculptural processes have become the magic instruments of a post-Freudian fairy-tale, in which life and death, pleasure and pain, nourishment and poison have become entangled in an exchange that could lead to deadly battle, intense pleasure, or remain a secret. Emotionally evocative without ever telling a clear story, affecting without being obvious, Ducker’s sculptures seem to be there with the mute theatricality of minimalism, yet to engage with notions of transformation. With simple formal means, they excavate fears, anxieties and desires associated with the most visceral of physical sensations – attraction and repulsion, pleasure and pain, need and self-sufficiency. The work keeps referring back to the body, a missing body we as viewers cannot help but imagine filling- in for with our own, transforming it into the ill-fitting piece of a jigsaw we are trying in vain to complete with our presence." Patrizia Di Bello, 2007 Professor   School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media Birkbeck College				Richard Ducker’s sculpture continues to surprise the viewer and defy categorization; his ideas and objects are influenced by diverse sources and paradigms that he brings together with a characteristic bravura. The sculptural objects he makes are at times both somber and mischievous, often imbued with a sassy knowingness. Straying deliberately into various genres such as the sexually charged fetish object or metaphorically overloaded ‘memento mori’, we encounter a rich conflation of image and object that uses and abuses our notions of taste and cliché and turns them upside down. Just as humour and irony are integral keys to understanding Ducker's work so is the process of making that we compelled to consider in the encounter with the work. Construction, selection (of found objects /ready made/ assisted ready mades), the combination of materials and eventual deployment in a space are the main considerations in Ducker's sculpture. Ducker’s sculptures seduce us with their convincing surfaces of concrete or fur, glitter and plastic; sometimes the pieces are absurd, other times they are sober suggesting loss and vulnerability; the incongruous arrangements inspired by collage and assemblage refer to the biographical and domestic background of the ideas and inspiration. Success in Ducker's work lies in use of process and skillful manipulation of these diverse physical elements that add up to a kind of dyslexic personal poetry and grabs us by the collar with both humour and pathos. Matt Franks, 2008
		Richard continues to exhibit and curate shows in London and elsewhere and has work in a number of private collections internationally. Education: Goldsmiths College, University of London   M.A.  Fine Art Reading University    B.A.  Fine Art Forthcoming: 2008        'Heart of Glass', Concrete & Glass, London 2008        'Trace', Schwartz Gallery, London 2008        'Fluid Foundations', V22 - The Wharf Road Project, London 2008        'Words Fail Me', Gone Tomorrow Gallery, London (solo show) Selected Exhibitions: 2008        'WasteState', BearSpace, London 2008        'Matt Franks, Sheena Macrae, Richard Ducker', Fieldgate Gallery, London 2007         Gone Tomorrow Gallery, London, 'Durty Turkey' 2007         Fieldgate Gallery, London, 'Intervention' 2007         Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Minneapolis, 'Enchanted' 2006-7      Studio 1.1, London, 'Santa's Grotto' 2006         Fieldgate Gallery, London, ‘Houses in Motion’ 2006        Fieldgate Gallery, London, 'Beauty and the Beast' 2006        sevenseven contemporary art, London,  'No-ship' 2006        Fieldgate Gallery, London, 'Kamikaze Blossom' 2006        sevenseven contemporary art, London,  ‘MCTwo’ 2005        Flowers Central, London,  ‘Small is Beautiful’ 2005        The Crypt @ St. Pancras, London,  ‘Memoire Collective’ 2005        Cell Project Space, London,  ‘Hard Labour’ 2004        21 New Fetter Lane, London,   ‘Sonya’s Office’ 2002        The Yard Gallery,  Nottingham,  ‘Growth & Form’ 2002        London Art Fair, London,  Mark Jason Gallery 2001        The Kitchen, New York,  ‘Art for Plot’ 2001        TWO10 Gallery, London,  Wellcome Trust 2000        Royal Academy, Edinburgh,  SSA  Annual Open 2000     2000        Mappin Gallery, Sheffield,  ‘New Art 2000’ 1998        Cable Street Gallery, London,  ‘Store’ 1997        Commercial Too, London,  ‘WheNever’ 1996        Commercial Too, London,  ‘Nicepace’ 1994        Shad Thames, London,  ‘Inflation Saints’ 1994        IAS, London,  ‘Mix Fiz Spin’ 1993        ICA, London,  ‘Art for Equality’ 1993        Clove Gallery, London,  ‘Contingent’ 1992        Kettles Yard, Cambridge,  ‘Face Values’ 1992        Serpentine Gallery, London,  Barclays Young Artist Award Artwork in private collections in Britain, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Australia and Singapore