• 1944 Born in Guangzhou, China. Family moved to Hong Kong in 1951. Educated in England. High school at Bath, then studied painting at Leeds College of Art and sculpture at St. Martins in London. The David Smith exhibition at Tate Gallery in 1966 made a big impression, and he later met Anthony Caro and sculptors of the ‘New Generation’ Whitechapel Gallery exhibition.
• 1968 Helped to set up Londons first cooperative studio at Stockwell Depot. Clement Greenberg made a studio visit and his criticism was very encouraging. First of a series of studio exhibitions, which was later toured in Scandanavia.
• 1969 First exhibition in Germany at ‘Prospect 69’ in Duesseldorf where he met Joseph Beuys.
• 1972 First one man exhibition at Kasmin Gallery, London.
• 1973 Hired by Ron Dutton to teach part time at Wolverhampton College of Art. Began to teach part time at St. Martin’s College of Art, London.
• 1975 First visit to America. Clement Greenberg made introductions for studio visits toKenneth Noland and Jules Olitski, and to David Smiths property at Bolton Landing.
• 1976 Invited by Lenton Parr to be artist in residence at VCA, Melbourne, Australia.
• 1977 Artist in residence with the Northern Arts Council in Cumbria, England
• 1980 Invited to teach at the Hochscule der Kuenste Berlin and was appointed Professor for sculpture in 1982. Other visiting teaching in Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Athens, New York, Tokyo, and in China at Shenyang and Hangzhou.
• 1999 Invited to make a monumental sculpture in steel at Busan, Korea.
• 1986 - 2000 Periodic working visits to America to make and exhibit sculpture in Vermont and New York.
• 2003 Four month working visit in China at Nanjing and Shanghai. Then decided to establish a studio at Suo Jia Cun, Beijing.

I live in England, Germany and China.

London in the late 1960’s was an exciting city, especially for a young art student, and I was quickly embroiled in an art scene that was very open to sculpture. Our sights were set on America where the artists following the lead from Abstract Expressionism were on top. Pop Art seemed trivial and Minimalism, which was the fashion when I first crossed the Atlantic, seemed cold and dry. The art boom was just beginning, New York was manageable then, and abstract modernism was well represented by galleries and museums.

But I had to drive seven hours away from the city to see David Smiths meadows, full of unsold sculptures. Authoritative and intensely felt, his welded constructions put the academic and traditional sculpture of Henry Moore and Giacometti in the shade. Although their work was everywhere to be seen, America’s greatest sculptor was not easy to find.

It was Pop Art that became the mainstream manner and its various mutations have now become known as Post Modernism, which is the standard and orthodox style of our time. Marcel Duchamp had influenced the Pop artists and that affect still continues with the various activities made under the label of sculpture, which meant that sculpture became the medium where anything goes. It is very fashionable to be far out and ‘break boundaries’, but it was not possible to do that under the label of painting. Therefore sculpture became the medium where anything was possible.

But when its essential nature is neglected, sculpture can be very weak, and that nature derives from 2000 years of art history and not from Duchamp. Back in 1920 he had completely misunderstood the truly experimental sculpture made by Picasso, who had transposed the style of cubism into sculptures that were so original and new that even today they leave avenues to be explored. This new sculpture, because it is built, joined together and constructed, is essentially open, and has abandoned the volumetric tradition of modeling and carving. As such, it makes a more radical break from the past than is seen in any of the other arts.

Sculpture at its best, the Zeuss Temple pediments, Tang bronzes, Donatello, Maillol or Gonzalez, respect the medium for its essential nature and care about its limitations. It is to get near to this level of achievement that I work within certain limits, and experience has taught me that limits do not constrain but are liberating. Above all, I see no reason to abandon or react against the modernist canon; there is too much unfinished business.

I am preparing work in the studio at Sau Jia Cun for a one man show in Berlin opening 5 September  at Galerie Tanja Gerken, Augustrasse 49. This will include work made in Beijing and Berlin.