INTRODUCTION

The idea for Edward Allington's current exhibition, almost entirely dedicated to the integration of sculpture with drawing, originates from his desire — a preoccupation of his work since the beginning of the 1980s — to achieve a unity of experience, and a unity of the 'ideal form' as depicted in drawing with the 'real' three-dimensional object. Allington's work since the 1970s has been informed by Plato's notion of a higher truth set against its mere reflection in reality, and by a desire for sculptural unity between mind and body. At first Allington attempted to accommodate irregular natural forms into what later became models for the ideal forms he began to make in 1978, and which were exhibited as ideal standard forms in 1981 at the ICA . It is from these 'pure' forms that his current work originates, further enriched, however, by Allington's obsession with classical motifs and the interpretation and embellishment of an object by mass culture into kitsch. The juxtaposition of the ideal with its interpretation in the realm of kitsch is best illustrated in THE GOLDEN PAVILION: AS SEEN FROM THE FRONT, 1984, also one of his most recent installations combining drawing with sculpture and thus summarizing such previous installations as SOME INTERESTING PLANETS and FALLEN TOWERS, (1981) THE PRISONERS OF THE SUN (1982) and THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO of 1983.

Allington's work, since late 1982 when he began to incorporate plastic mass-produced imitations of objects like fruits, roses and fish, has become progressively more concerned with decorative ornament and has begun to acquire distinctly baroque stylistic qualities. It is this ambivalent combination of a decorative baroque element with the notion of pure classical forms in one work that lies at the centre of the present installation, in which Allington makes active use of the architectural space of the Gallery for the purposes of creating an illusionistic space — the most conceptually complete environment for his work to date.

I would like to give special thanks to Edward Allington for his enthusiasm in undertaking this project; I am also grateful to Stuart Morgan for his illuminating essay on Edward Allington's recent work. Such a complex and considered installation has depended from the beginning on the facilities made available by Des Lane at Sir Philip Howard Roman Catholic School as part of the Whitechapel Art Gallery 's Artist in Schools Project, and also on the technical assistance of Jack Ord. We are further grateful to Nicholas Logsdail of the Lisson Gallery for his co-operation.

Particular thanks are due to the Henry Moore Foundation, without whose generous grant this catalogue would not have been possible.

Milena Kalinovska

Exhibitions Organizer