Sculptor, draughtsman, writer and teacher, born in Troutbeck Bridge, Westmorland, who eventually lived in London. For Allington, “drawing is the basis of my practice”. He commonly worked in ink and emulsion on used ledger paper from the late 1970s, as in his 2006 show at The Drawing Gallery. “I was looking for a ground strong enough to equal the illusionistic renderings of objects I was drawing. The aim was formal: a very strong ‘figure to ground’ contrast. The discovery of ledger paper provided this and much more. These pages are fragments of our lives and history”. Allington studied at Lancaster School of Art, 1968–71, the Central School of Arts and Crafts, 1971–4, and the Royal College of Art. Had first solo show in 1981 and exhibited regularly at Lisson Gallery. Foreign one-man exhibitions included Diane Brown, New York, 1987, and Fuji TV Tokyo and Gallery Face Tokyo, 1988. Also took part in foreign group shows, including British Sculpture 1960–1988 in Antwerp, in 1988. Participated in John Moores Liverpool Exhibition from 1985, in 1989–90 gaining a prize. Allington was usually identified with British Object Sculptors of the 1980s. His work was said to employ “the assimilation of the abhorrent through the use of contemporary artificial objects and classical imagery.” He was Gregory Fellow in Sculpture, 1991–3, and Sargant Fellow at the British School at Rome in 1997, the year his collected essays A Method for Sorting Cows was published. He was also a regular contributor to art magazines, such as Frieze. Allington became head of graduate sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art. He completed major public commissions in the United Kingdom, Germany and France. The Arts Council, Tate Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum, Irish Museum of Modern Art, public holdings France and Japan and numerous private collections hold examples.