This work '"ndustrial Cluster" had its beginnings as a large ink drawing which I photographed, reduced and eventually refined into a print and then modelled in terracotta. This was made quickly, almost a sketch, a little rough, fresh, but with a good presence. It really only had a front and back and the casting was straightforward, just using sand at a commercial foundry. I eventually hand finished it in the studio.

As the train immerged into the Everton Valley the ground would immediately fall away and you 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 and 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.

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 and account for, in my case by making sculpture.

The journey into the city became the perfect antidote to suburban Maghull on the north side of the green belt.

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.