Gregory breathes new life into skulls

"Art is robbery," Italian architect Renzo Piano has said, "in the noblest sense."

He meant it was about absorbing influences, "taking, taking, taking and about giving back."

In his aptly named exhibition Skulduggery, Steven Gregory shows real human skulls with a flat coating of semi-precious stones in the manner of Aztec religious artefacts.

A splendid example is the turquoise and lignite mosaic, the Skull Of The Smoking Mirror, thought to represent the warrior god Tezcatlipoca. It's in the Mexico Gallery of the British Museum.

The eye-sockets are filled with polished pyrites and shell, whereas Gregory adds glass eyes to his skulls, with a roguishly drooping eyelid in A Nod's As Good As A Wink.

In the catalogue essay, Damien Hirst, an artist with long associations with the dead concentrates on modern connections for Gregory's work. He perceives an amorphous weirdness, reminding him of Dr Who whose theme tune begins the essay.

The major exhibit of Skulduggery at Cass Sculpture Foundation's London headquarters, is a model Ferris wheel, 130cm high of skulls and bones with beaded decoration. Here are spin-offs, so to speak - a photograph Bones Print and a small bronze of the wheel.

Downstairs in the gallery is a retrospective for Gregory including small versions of his whimsical animal forms, such as Fish On A Bicycle and unconvincing elephantine creatures shown dancing and performing gymnastics. Hirst owns a huge sculpture of a pair of these.

Born in South Africa, Gregory now lives in Crouch End and has a studio at the Chocolate Factory in Wood Green.

Article by Alison Oldham, first published in Hampstead & Highgate Express, December 2005