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Text by the curator Sophie Raikes and edited by Penelope Curtis.

Published to accompany the exhibition Prospects and Interiors, Mezzanine Gallery, Leeds Art Gallery 1 June – 24 August 2008.

Prospects and Interiors looks at drawings by contemporary sculptors of interior space, both physical and mental. The selection ranges from perspective drawings of imagined architectural interiors, laid out as virtual stage sets with a series of suggestive props; through highly worked, close-up studies, in which floors, walls and furnishings are turned into abstract patterns; to more expressive abstractions which describe the interior spaces of the mind, those places onto which we project our hopes and fears.

Running throughout the show is the sculptor’s concern to find a way of representing space as matter. It explores the peculiar ability of the drawn line or mark to make evident usually invisible currents and forces - such as heat, sound and emotion - and to dissolve material differences between various objects and between objects and space. It suggests that, through drawing, sculptors can express space in new ways - in terms of light and shade, emotional and physical forces and particles of matter - and make ‘nothingness’ into something that is ‘full’ and charged with energy.