The eighth contemporary sculpture to be exhibited in the space, Ian Dawson’s “Green Drum, 2002” is made from a material that is familiar to all of us – medium density polyethylene. Starting with the kind of mass-produced, utilitarian object that we usually ignore, Dawson has used heat to transform a plastic drum into this tentacled presence that is hard to read but certainly demands our attention. Reminiscent of both sea-centipede and hugely magnified pollen grain, it hovers uncertainly between plant and animal forms.

Dawson has exploited the material’s essentially liquid nature to make the drum’s orderly form morph, like some impossibly flexible superhero or cartoon character, so an element of comedy, or at least light heartedness, ought to be present. But although the material also carries associations with the kinds of ‘safe’ toys we give to infants, as well as children’s playground equipment, it does not seem merry or celebratory. Rather it inhabits the Napoleon Garden more like some stranded, doleful and wounded visitor from another planet.