Working predominantly with sculpture and drawing, Allen’s artworks contain and embrace. With an attitude more closely resembling an open palm than a strong handshake or fist, the works openly reveal the processes of their making and the joy therein. Often rudimentary casting processes are used - not pouring and curing, but embodying a form by compression of one material against another, or threading ribbons into cuts made specifically to receive them. Plucked from the obscurity of second-hand markets or selected directly from the ground, objects are treated as material, being crushed, inlaid or woven into behaviours previously unknown to them. An interplay of decoration and functionality emerges in these sculptures whose commitment to understanding and responding to the needs of constituent parts is centred, but also seemingly aware of and welcoming onlookers.