The first ever major retrospective of sculpture in Britain during the 1980s will open at the Mead Gallery at the University of Warwick this October. Making It: Sculpture in Britain 1977-1986 examines an exciting time in contemporary art history: a ten - year period in which a new generation of artists brought a fresh approach to the making of sculpture.

Artists including Edward Allington, Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Antony Gormley, Shirazah Houshiary, Anish Kapoor, Richard Wentworth, Alison Wilding and Bill Woodrow rose to prominence in the 1980s under the loose banner ‘New British Sculpture’.

Many other artists, including Eric Bainbridge, Helen Chadwick, Julian Opie, Cornelia Parker and Richard Wilson, forged reputations for their innovative approaches to sculptural practice in this period.

These artists found great freedom in the choice of materials and form. Described by some as ‘sculpture of the everyday’, there was a rise in the use of found or recycled materials: sticky tape, fake fur, plastic toys, white goods.

In Tony Cragg’s George and the Dragon (1984), for example, a sprawling network of entangled mass-produced waste pipes strangle a table, a basket and a milk urn. Meanwhile, the traditional sculptural interest in the body was re-imagined.

Visitors to Making It can see Antony Gormley’s acrobatic lead body cast, poised as if ready to dive into the gallery, and Helen Chadwick’s plywood model of a school gym vaulting horse resting static on the floor, a quiet embodiment of a personal history.

Visitors can extend their exploration into sculpture by finding work by artists featured in Making It within the University of Warwick’s permanent collection.

The recently unveiled new work Habitat, by David Nash, a monumental carving from an ancient cedar tree, is positioned in the University of Warwick’s Diamond Wood, and sculptures by Richard Wentworth, Peter Randall-Page and Richard Deacon can also be found around the campus.

Making It: Sculpture in Britain 1977-1986 runs at the Mead Gallery between 8 October and 29 November 2015.