This sculpture Revenant is a smaller version in bronze of a much larger sculpture made on a residency in Luxembourg. My studio there was in the basement of the British Embassy which sat on the edge of the deep gorge that runs through the city, spanned by a skewed concrete bridge. Many years later I realised that the physical proximity to this scene must have translated into the work.

As the train emerged from the tunnel into the Everton Valley the ground immediately fell away and we would be elevated as the tracks passed over the final mile of the Leeds-Liverpool canal, its banks straddled by huge pylons that stretched into the distance. On a southern brow sat Tillotsons Ltd and further along on the right the Tate & Lyle sugar refinery with its criss-crossing conveyors standing adjacent to the docks, its cargo ships barely visible behind the massive bonded warehouses.

Amongst all this drama, an array of huge cylindrical silos would scent the scene with the smell of stored grain and hops.

Within those few minutes the aesthetic of pure function ruled. This journey into the city became the perfect antidote to suburban Maghull on the north side of the green belt.

I realised many years later that this experience, once or twice a month whilst travelling to Liverpool, has stayed with me. It was a kind of physical drama that someday I would try to account for, in my case by making sculpture.

Born in Ormskirk, Lancashire, on 12 November 1959, Stephen Lewis studied Fine Art Sculpture at Manchester Polytechnic and the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. A sculptor and co-founder of APT Studios and Gallery, Deptford, he has exhibited widely in Britain and internationally, including at the Whitechapel Gallery, the Hepworth, Wakefield, and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

His public commissions include Circumsphere, Rotherhithe, and Rare Earth, commissioned by the Royal Opera House and Essex County Council. He was founding editor of FUSE magazine and worked as a visiting lecturer in art schools across the UK from 1985 to 2016. In 2025, he received the Bryan Robertson Award.