A theme in my sculpture for many years was inspired by the Tombs of the Apis Bulls at Saqqara. These massive monolithic granite boxes fitted in with my ‘minimalist’ aesthetic, however, their power was layered with highly evocative meaning.

Contemporary industrial processing enabled me, here in Cairo, to devise a method of producing sarcophagal forms of great size that exhibited the magnificence of Egyptian stone initially from the Eastern Mountains that were the source of rare porphyry and breccia.

This new work directed at an engagement with Chephren that began some 15 years ago in a quest for the source of the stone of his famous funerary statue. The work realized here is not made with that material but with the material of his sarcophagus—granite from Aswan—found within his pyramid.

My sculpture for Forever Is Now is a personal homage that reaches for the majesty of a sarcophagus of a scale and uniqueness appropriate to this great builder. —Stephen Cox RA