About the work

Swan is a preliminary drawing which accompanies Deshayes’ latest body of sculptures. Working primarily with various methods of industrial casting, Deshayes’s sculptures tend to be hard, made from materials such as plastic, ceramic, vitreous enamel, aluminium or cast iron. Formally, however, his works reference soft, moving and malleable things; things that are alive and functioning. Recent works have operated as working metal radiators that pump water around a room, or water fountains in public ponds, while being formally suggestive of the interior of a body. Deshayes is concerned with turning the inside out. Plumbing systems that are usually hidden, both of the body – intestines and bowels, but also of the domestic and civic environment that carries its waste and keeps it clean – are central to his work.

Date and country of birth

1983, FR

About the artist

Born 1983 Nancy, Nicolas Deshayes lives and works in Dover. Graduated from BA Fine Art Chelsea College of Art and Design (2005), and MA Sculpture at the Royal College of Art (2009).

Deshayes makes sculpture from a wide range of industrial processes and materials such as cast iron, factory ceramics and vitreous enamel. Drawing on the history and temperature of these processes he explores the relationship between industrialisation and the human body, by pitting materials that are usually used for sanitation, medical or civic situations against the malleability of being human.

Selected solo exhibitions include Hot Springs, E-Werk fur Kunstrom, Luckenwalde (2019); Nicolas Deshayes at the Pleasure Gardens, Pump House Gallery, London (2018); Thames Water, Modern Art, London (2016); Images Moving Out Onto Space, Tate, St Ives (2015); Darling, Gutter., Glasgow Sculpture Studios (2015); and Crude Oil, S1 Artspace, Sheffield (2013). Selected group exhibitions include 58th October Salon, Belgrade Biennial (2020); London Art Now, curated by Norman Rosenthal, Ca'Pesaro, Venice (2019); NOI, Museoin, Bolzano (2019); Le Paradoxe de L’iceberg, FRAC Ile de France, Chateau de Rentilly, Bussy-Saint-Martin (2018); Tubologie: Nos Vies Dans Les Tubes, FRAC Grand Large, Dunkirk (2018); British Art Show 8, Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2016); Inhuman, Fridericianum, Kassel (2015); British Art Show 8, Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds (2015); and Pool, Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover (2014).