Past exhibitions at Henry Moore Institute
2025
SUNLIGHT: Roger Ackling
4 April – 22 June 2025
Sculpture Galleries
SUNLIGHT: Roger Ackling is the first survey and most comprehensive exhibition of the work of artist Roger Ackling (1947-2014), one of the most quietly influential artists of the late twentieth century.
Sarah Casey: Negative Mass Balance
4 April – 22 June 2025
Study Gallery
Exploring the fragile state of glacial archaeology, Sarah Casey’s delicate, atmospheric drawings and sculpture are inspired by objects emerging from ice in the Swiss Alps.
2024
The Traumatic Surreal
22 November 2024 – 16 March 2025
Sculpture Galleries
Marking the centenary of surrealism, this exhibition brings together work made after 1960 through to the present day to explore the radical appropriation and development of surrealist sculptural traditions by post-war women artists in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg.
John Hoyland: Imaginary Beings
22 November 2024 – 16 March 2025
Study Gallery
Brightly coloured and loaded with creatureliness, this exhibition features British artist John Hoyland’s only mature group of sculptures.
Hany Armanious: Stone Soup
12 July – 3 November 2024
Sculpture Galleries
Hany Armanious, one of Australia’s leading sculptors, playfully lays bare the fundamental decisions and processes of making and presenting sculpture.
Sculpting Royalty: Hew Locke and Mary Thornycroft
12 July – 3 November 2024
Study Gallery
What happens when the work of a Victorian royal sculptor quite literally clashes with that of a twenty-first century cultural commentator?
Sculpture Photographed: A View from the Archive of Sculptors’ Papers
12 July 2024 – 16 March 2025
Archive Gallery
This display explores the role played by photography across the history and practice of sculpture from the late-nineteenth century to the present day.
2023
The Weight of Words
7 July – 26 November 2023
Main Galleries
Featuring an intergenerational array of contemporary artists and poets from around the world, The Weight of Words explores the profound connections between the plastic and linguistic qualities of words, in ways that range from humorous to haunting.
Egon Altdorf
17 June – 26 November 2023
Gallery 4
Egon Altdorf (1922–2008) was one of three prize-winners in the German competition for the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner, and went on to achieve success as a printmaker, graphic artist and interior designer as well as a sculptor.
Michael E. Smith
24 March – 18 June 2023
Main Galleries
Using found objects, Michael E. Smith’s materials are drawn from the global workflow of production-consumption-depletion. They are things that are thoroughly used, discarded, but won’t disappear. They are recognisable in their raw states, and remain so once absorbed into finished sculptures.
Rebecca Fortnum: Les Praticiennes
3 February – 4 June 2023
Gallery 4
This display of paintings and drawings by artist Rebecca Fortnum emerges from her ongoing interest in the women surrounding the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) in turn-of-the-century Paris.
Three decades of being in the moment
Online celebration
We celebrated turning thirty with a display looking at the history and architectural design of our building, as well as a creative competition inviting visitors to reimagine the iconic granite façade of the Institute.
2022
The Colour of Anxiety: Race, Sexuality and Disorder in Victorian Sculpture
25 November 2022 – 26 February 2023
Main galleries
The Colour of Anxiety examines objects that introduced colour and new materials into the sculptural process, situating them within the context of the anxiety which often weighed upon Victorian society in the face of social change and scientific advances.
Claye Bowler: Top
7 October 2022 – 15 January 2023
Gallery 4
Claye Bowler’s work explores the archive – the body as an archive, hoarding as archiving, and looking at the political priorities of history. He is interested in how queer and trans narratives specifically have been perpetually hidden, erased or destroyed.
Lungiswa Gqunta: Sleep in Witness
8 July – 30 October 2022
Main Galleries
Sleep in Witness traces the intangible world of dreams as a space of learning where extraordinary, overlooked and discredited places of knowledge are illuminated. The exhibition includes two new installations, Zinodaka and Ntabamanzi, along with the video Gathering 2019.
Archive Lives, Part 2: Documenting Women’s Sculptural Practices in Britain, 1963-1993
25 June – 25 September 2022
Gallery 4
Archive Lives Part 2 presents the work of five women who attended art school in the 1950s and 60s: Shelagh Cluett, Liliane Lijn, Kim Lim, Wendy Taylor and Gillian Wise.
A State of Matter: Modern and Contemporary Glass Sculpture
18 February – 5 June 2022
Main Galleries
Marking the United Nations International Year of Glass 2022, this exhibition explores glass as a material for sculpture through its three different states of matter: solid, liquid and gas.
Archive Lives, Part 1: Documenting Women’s Sculptural Practices in Britain, 1939-1960
5 February – 12 June 2022
Gallery 4
This focused exhibition explores the experiences of women working in sculpture during the wartime and immediate post-war period.
2021
Henry Moore: Configuration
17 September 2021 – 23 January 2022
Gallery 4
A rare opportunity to see Henry Moore’s work at the Institute, this display offers insight into his use of material, space and the humanisation of organic form.
Julia Crabtree and William Evans: Slip
17 September 2021 – 16 January 2022
Main Galleries
Crabtree and Evans’ work incorporates a breadth of materials and modes of making, from casting and glass-blowing to video-making and printing. Each new body of work initiates a sequence of contained sculptural experiments.
Portable Sculpture
18 May – 29 August 2021
Main Galleries
Bringing together works from 1934 to the present day, this exhibition looks at sculptures that have been deliberately designed to fold up, or pack down, or that have been made while on the move.
Rafael Pérez Evans: Handful
8 May – 29 August 2021
Gallery 4 and entrance steps
Rafael Pérez Evans’ temporary sculptures made using foodstuffs draw upon legacies of 1960s sculpture, Land Art and acts of social protest. For this exhibition, Pérez Evans presents three new works that explore a tension between basic human need and the overproduction of food.
2020
Paloma Varga Weisz: Bumped Body
13 March 2020 – 3 January 2021
Main Galleries and Gallery 4
Discover Paloma Varga Weisz’s enchanting figurative sculpture, made using traditional techniques, including woodcarving and ceramics.
2019
Edward Allington: Things Unsaid
25 October 2019 – 23 February 2020
Main Galleries, Gallery 4 and the Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Seeking new ways of ‘moving and matching the complexity of the world’, Edward Allington (1951-2017) was part of a generation of artists responding to changing aesthetic, social and cultural values at the end of the 1970s.
Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019
22 June – 29 September 2019
Across all our gallery spaces and the Sculpture Research Library
From new work by international artists to sculpture drawn from world-class collections, this festival showcases the diversity of contemporary sculptural practice across four sites: the Henry Moore Institute, The Hepworth Wakefield, Leeds Art Gallery and Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Phyllida Barlow: Sculpture and Drawings from the Leeds Collection
8 March – 29 September 2019
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Working with mass produced materials and ad hoc processes, Barlow creates objects that are at once playful and strange, abstract and anthropomorphic, from hand-sized works to monumental commissions.
Renee So: Bellarmines and Bootlegs
8 March – 2 June 2019
Main Galleries and Gallery 4
Renee So’s playful, cartoon-like and typically drunken characters, informed by research into European and Assyrian sculpture, present a unique take on portraiture that combines the historical with the mythical.
2018
Lucia Nogueira
5 October 2018 – 20 January 2019
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
The Brazilian-born, London-based artist Lucia Nogueira (1950-98) was recognised as an intelligent and instinctive maker of meaning through objects. This exhibition presents rarely seen sculptures and works on paper from the Leeds Sculpture Collections alongside a number of loans.
Senga Nengudi
21 September 2018 – 10 February 2019
Main Galleries and Gallery 4
The first solo institutional exhibition of the work of Senga Nengudi outside the United States, this exhibition brings together pioneering work from 1969 to the present, alongside a new installation.
A Frieze for Leeds: Imagining a Sculptural Façade for Leeds Art Gallery in 1968
13 June – 2 September 2018
Gallery 4
This intriguing set of drawings and models documents an unrealised project from the 1960s that was designed to revive the entrance to Leeds Art Gallery.
The Sculpture Collections
22 March – 26 August 2018
Across the Henry Moore Institute and Leeds Art Gallery
Celebrating a thirty-six year partnership that has built one of the strongest collections of British sculpture in the world, this exhibition showcases the best of the Leeds Sculpture Collections.
Neil Gall: The Studio – Cover Versions
21 February – 2 September 2018
Reception and the Sculpture Research Library
This display presents seventy of Neil Gall’s collage works in which he cuts into copies of The Studio magazine, plays around with their images and typographies, and adds his own over-drawings to create these ‘cover versions’.
Sculpture by Another Name: Tony Carter’s ‘By Bread Only’ 1978-79
21 February – 20 May 2018
Gallery 4
This single work exhibition presents By Bread Only – For the Demise of Icons 1978-79, a major work by the sculptor Tony Carter (1943-2016), which has recently entered the Leeds Museums and Galleries Collection.
2017
Becoming Henry Moore
30 November 2017 – 18 February 2018
Main Galleries
To coincide with the 40th anniversary of our founding, Becoming Henry Moore gives an insight into the influences at play in the mind of Britain’s foremost modern sculptor during his formative years.
David Dye: Devices
13 October 2017 – 18 February 2018
Sculpture Study Galleries
This archival exhibition showcases the dynamic early work of David Dye, an artist who was at the heart of the radical changes taking place in British sculpture during the 1960s and 70s.
Mary Gillick: Her Art in your Pocket
20 September 2017 – 28 January 2018
Gallery 4
This display is the first dedicated to Gillick’s sculpture, and presents plaster models, drawings and photographs showing her working processes for the production of coins, medals and portrait reliefs.
Jiro Takamatsu: The Temperature of Sculpture
13 July – 22 October 2017
Main Galleries
Jiro Takamatsu (1936-98) is central to the development of post-war art in Japan. He expanded points into volume, brought sculptural actions into the life of the city, and made shadows and perspective tangible.
Ghisha Koenig: Machines Restrict their Movement
25 May – 13 August 2017
Gallery 4
Ghisha Koenig (1921-93) dedicated her artistic life to studying and sculpting modern factory labour in Britain.
Aleksandra Domanović: Votives
23 March – 11 June 2017
Main Galleries
A new commission of sculptures by Aleksandra Domanović investigate how technological advances impact on communication and culture.
Roy Ascott: Form has Behaviour
25 January – 23 April 2017
Gallery 4
Roy Ascott (b. 1934) is a pioneering British artist who has worked throughout his career with cybernetics, telematics and communication theories. This focused exhibition sets out to establish Ascott’s innovative work in the narrative of British sculpture.
2016
City Sculpture Projects 1972
24 November 2016 – 19 February 2017
Main Galleries
We revisit the ambitious, multi-city exhibition that brought sculpture into daily urban life.
Eleanor Antin: ‘CARVING: A Traditional Sculpture’
28 September 2016 – 3 January 2017
Gallery 4
‘CARVING: A Traditional Sculpture’ is a landmark work in the history of conceptual art, and a key reference on art and art history courses today.
The Body Extended: Sculpture and Prosthetics
21 July – 23 October 2016
Main Galleries
Throughout history, human beings have sought to extend and supplement their own form. This exhibition traces how artists have addressed radical changes to the very thing we humans know best: our bodies.
William Hamo Thornycroft: ‘Charity and Justice’ 1888
18 May – 21 August 2016
Gallery 4
Celebrating a new acquisition for the Leeds Sculpture Collection, exhibited in public for the first time since its creation in 1888.
A Lesson in Sculpture with John Latham
24 March – 19 June 2016
Main Galleries
Material transformations. Matter, physics and process. Monuments to labour. Through these provocations British artist John Latham (1921-2006) rethought the limits and possibilities of art.
Olga Jevrić: Proposals for Monuments
3 February – 17 April 2016
Gallery 4
Olga Jevrić, a Serbian artist who was instrumental to the development of abstract sculpture in Yugoslavia, could evoke the monumental within the smallest of sculptures.
2015
Katrina Palmer: The Necropolitan Line
10 December 2015 – 21 February 2016
Main Galleries
British artist Katrina Palmer (b. 1967) presents writing and amplified sound as sculpture, working with fragmented narratives to evoke physical and psychological human interactions with objects.
Christine Kozlov: Information
10 December 2015 – 21 February 2016
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Drawing from Kozlov’s to date unexamined archive, this exhibition explores how sculpture became redefined during the conceptual art movement, when idea came to take precedence over object.
Object Lessons
30 September 2015 – 3 January 2016
Gallery 4
The ‘object lesson’ was based on the premise of learning via a direct encounter with a collection of objects. This focused exhibition offers a fascinating first-hand insight into this once innovative concept that is central to understanding objects.
Paul Neagu: Palpable Sculpture
13 August – 8 November 2015
Main Galleries and the Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This exhibition celebrates multi-sensory encounters with sculpture, presenting over 120 works by Neagu including sculptures, drawings, films, texts and archival material, much of which has never previously been exhibited.
Eileen Agar: Natural Ready-mades
27 May – 30 August 2015
Gallery 4
Eileen Agar sought out sculptural forms in nature, combing the shoreline for ‘natural ready-mades’ that she choreographed into collages and sculptures.
Carol Bove / Carlo Scarpa
2 April – 12 July 2015
Main Galleries
Bringing together contemporary sculptures by American artist Carol Bove (b. 1971) with exhibition furniture, sculptures and architectural prototypes by Venetian architect and exhibition designer Carlo Scarpa (1906-78).
Garth Evans: Sculpture Photographs
2 April – 12 July 2015
Sculpture Study Galleries
Garth Evans (b. 1934) is central to the narrative of British sculpture, his work experimenting with the possibilities of medium, form, weight and scale.
A Study of Modern Japanese Sculpture
28 January – 19 April 2015
Gallery 4
Nine sculptures from the Taisho and early Showa periods (1912-41), bringing work from this period in Japan to British audiences for the first time.
2014
Dorothy Annan and Trevor Tennant
11 November 2014 – 1 March 2015
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Taking a newly acquired archival collection, this exhibition sheds light on the relationship between sculpture and architecture and the role of art in British society following the Second World War in Britain.
The Event Sculpture
10 November 2014 – 8 March 2015
Main Galleries and exterior of the Institute
The Henry Moore Institute turns inside out as artists Lara Favaretto, Urs Fischer, Ceal Floyer, Simone Forti, Simon Martin, Anthony McCall, Maria Nordman, Tino Sehgal and Roman Signer use the exterior of our building as a site for temporary sculptures.
Lygia Clark: Organic Planes
24 September 2014 – 4 January 2015
Gallery 4
Brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s (1920-88) experiential sculpture sought to break the space between artwork and perception, radically innovating the relationship between the art object and the audience.
Gego. Line as Object
24 July – 19 October 2014
Main Galleries and the Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Gego. Line as Object investigates the Venezuelan artist’s unrivalled engagement with the problems of form and space – using light, shadow, scale and gravity in a constant process of discovery.
D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form
14 May – 17 August 2014
Gallery 4
A poetic and mathematical study of scale, gravity, order and process, On Growth and Form lodged itself within the consciousness of twentieth-century sculpture.
Photographing Sculpture: How the Image Moves the Object
20 March – 22 June 2014
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Photography has made sculpture mobile since the birth of the medium, whether activating them visually, transporting them by proxy or documenting their travels across space and time.
Ian Kiaer: Tooth House
20 March – 22 June 2014
Main Galleries
Ian Kiaer (b. 1971) repurposes debris to create props and proposals for perceiving objects in space, asking questions of value and form.
Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg: Construction for a Spatial Structure VI (‘KPS6’, 1919/73)
22 January – 20 April 2014
Gallery 4
Vladimir (1899-1982) and Georgii (1900-33) Stenberg are central figures of the early Russian Constructivist movement, characterised by a laboratory style of working that placed the ‘artist-producer’ within everyday activities.
2013
Stephen Cripps: Pyrotechnic Sculptor
21 November 2013 – 16 February 2014
Sculpture Study Galleries
Cripps transformed objects with actions, sound and pyrotechnics. In his short career from 1970-82 he developed many ambitious schemes for mechanical sculptures and performance works.
Dennis Oppenheim: Thought Collision Factories
21 November 2013 – 16 February 2014
Main Galleries
Dennis Oppenheim (1938-2011) initiated sculptural events in a quest to make ideas material, producing sculptures that took the form of actions, performances, installations, film and architecture.
Jean Tinguely: ‘Spiral’ (1965)
25 September 2013 – 5 January 2014
Gallery 4
Swiss artist Jean Tinguely’s (1925-91) experiments with mechanical contraptions explore how animated objects can initiate sculptural events.
The Age of Innocence: Replicating the Ideal Portrait in the New Sculpture Movement
25 July – 20 October 2013
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Examining notions of the ‘ideal’ in female portraits and head studies of the New Sculpture Movement, a group of late nineteenth-century artists whose emphasis on realism, emotion and sensuality signalled an important change in British sculpture.
Indifferent Matter: From Object to Sculpture
25 July – 20 October 2013
Main Galleries
By pairing twentieth-century sculptures by Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-96), Hans Haacke (b. 1936), Andy Warhol (1928-87) and Robert Smithson (1938-73) with ancient objects, this exhibition explores how objects resist the origins, names and histories given to them.
Alberto Giacometti: ‘Tête de femme (Flora Mayo)’ (c. 1927)
15 May – 18 August 2013
Gallery 4
This focused exhibition shows Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture ‘Tête de femme (Flora Mayo)’ (c. 1927) alongside his drawing ‘Corner of the Studio with ‘Self-Portrait’ from 1925 in Plaster’ (c. 1927).
Keir Smith: From Wall to Floor
21 March – 23 June 2013
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Keir Smith: From Wall to Floor focuses on the artist’s work made in the 1970s and early 80s, a time when he made the transition from figurative painting into sculpture, experimenting first with process-based art and performance before moving into a landscape setting.
Robert Filliou: The Institute of Endless Possibilities
21 March – 23 June 2013
Main Galleries
The first solo exhibition devoted to Filliou (1926-87) in the UK considers the French artist’s work outside of his close ties to Fluxus in order to focus specifically on his sculptural output, and asks the question: when does an everyday object become a sculpture?
Vladimir Markov: Displays and Fictions
30 January – 28 April 2013
Gallery 4
Vladimir Markov (1877-1914), a Latvian painter and art theorist fascinated by the display and understanding of art, scoured galleries across Europe to photograph ethnographic collections of sculpture.
2012
1913: The Shape of Time
22 November 2012 – 17 February 2013
Main Galleries
1913 was an extraordinary year in the histories of modern European art, seeing artists explore increasingly experimental ways of representing the complex life of the modern world.
Sturtevant: ‘Duchamp Bicycle Wheel’ (1969-1973)
26 September 2012 – 13 January 2013
Gallery 4
This focused exhibition features a single work by Sturtevant made between 1969 and 1973: ‘Duchamp Bicycle Wheel’.
Helen Chadwick: ‘Wreaths to Pleasure’
8 September 2012 – 17 February 2013
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Helen Chadwick’s innovative series of photographic ‘wreaths’ reveal a hidden world of visual and sensorial pleasures.
Sarah Lucas: Ordinary Things
18 July – 21 October 2012
Main Galleries
Ordinary Things takes Sarah Lucas’ recent series of sculptures ‘NUDS’ (2009-) as a starting point, looking forward and backward across an artistic practice that has engaged with the possibilities of sculpture for over two decades.
Vlassis Caniaris: ‘Composition’ (1974)
30 May – 2 September 2012
Gallery 4
Presenting a single sculptural work by Greek artist Vlassis Caniaris, ‘Composition’ from 1974, seen outside of Greece for the very first time.
Michael Dean: Government
12 April – 17 June 2012
Main Galleries
Michael Dean’s (b. Newcastle 1977) tactile concrete sculptures quote from and transform the Institute’s galleries.
Phyllida Barlow: Bad Copies
12 April – 17 June 2012
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Known primarily for her large-scale installations made from salvaged materials that are constructed on-site, Barlow has a continuous practice of drawing which she uses to explore and record her visual ideas.
John McCracken: ‘IV’ (1985) and ‘Neon’ (1989)
29 February – 13 May 2012
Gallery 4
John McCracken made blocks, slabs, planks and geometric shapes utilising the basic languages of sculpture: scale, colour, height, width and breadth. His sculptures ask a fundamental question: ‘how do things sit in space?’
2011
Nice Style: The World’s First Pose Band
14 December 2011 – 12 February 2012
Gallery 4
Presenting photographs, posters, postcards and archival material relating to ‘Nice Style’, a collaborative performance group set up in Maidstone in 1970 by British artists Bruce McLean, Paul Richards, Gary Chitty, Robin Fletcher and Ron Carr.
Shelagh Cluett: Drawing in Space
1 December 2011 – 11 March 2012
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This exhibition of intricate sculptures and drawings by the influential sculptor, Shelagh Cluett, marks the recent acquisition of her archive by the Institute.
United Enemies
1 December 2011 – 11 March 2012
Main Galleries
United Enemies looks at work made by artists in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s, a time when the idea of sculpture was being radically contested.
Tacita Dean: ‘Mario Merz’
6 September – 4 December 2011
Gallery 4
Tacita Dean’s work is concerned with the sculptural properties of light and space, which she explores through drawing, film and sound.
Mario Merz: What Is to Be Done?
27 July – 30 October 2011
Main Galleries
A leading figure of Arte Povera, Mario Merz’s approach to art making was driven by asking: what can an artist do in the face of a precarious future?
Darrell Viner: Early Work
27 July – 30 October 2011
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Darrell Viner (1947-2001) was a pioneer in the field of computer art. He originally turned to computers to pursue his interest in movement and animation and went on to apply the technology to kinetic and interactive sculpture.
Jean-Marc Bustamante: Dead Calm
21 April – 26 June 2011
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This is the first major exhibition of Jean-Marc Bustamante’s work in the UK, bringing together two areas of his practice to explore the relationship between photography and sculpture.
Savage Messiah: The Creation of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
16 March – 31 July 2011
Gallery 4
This exhibition highlights the extraordinary ways in which the life of the French-born sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915) entered mainstream culture.
Dear Henry Moore: Connections and Correspondence
3 February – 26 June 2011
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This exhibition looks at Moore’s associations with a younger generation of sculptors, for whom he was, as the critic Herbert Read described, ‘in some sense a parent’.
Henry Moore: Prints and Portfolios
3 February – 3 April 2011
Main Galleries
This major exhibition of prints, etchings and drawings explores the stories behind Moore’s graphic work in lavish detail and reveals his connections to literature.
2010
Angkor Wat: From Temple to Text
27 November 2010 – 20 February 2011
Gallery 4
Angkor Wat: From Temple to Text features paper ‘casts’ of extraordinary inscriptions carved into the stones of Cambodia’s iconic temple.
A Rough Equivalent: Sculpture and Pottery in the Post-War Period
29 September 2010 – 2 January 2011
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
A Rough Equivalent brings together sculpture and ceramics from the 1950s to the 1970s from the major collections at Leeds and York Art Galleries.
Undone: Making and Unmaking in Contemporary Sculpture
29 September 2010 – 2 January 2011
Main Galleries
Undone presents work by contemporary artists who are interested in engaging with the materiality and process of making sculpture.
Roman to English: The Migration of Forms in Early Northumberland
10 July – 10 October 2010
Exhibition in Gallery 4
A collection of remarkable sculptural fragments from the ancient kingdom of Northumbria reveals contrasts and underlying continuities between the Roman and Anglo Saxon periods.
Out of My Mouth: The ‘Photosculptures’ of Alina Szapocznikow
3 June – 29 August 2010
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This unique series of close-up images depicts pieces of gum which have been chewed by the artist to produce an assortment of abject sculptural forms.
Hermann Obrist: Art Nouveau Sculptor
2 June – 28 August 2010
Main Galleries
Hermann Obrist (1862-1927) was famous throughout Europe in the early 1900s for his innovative art nouveau designs in two and three dimensions, including furniture and textiles, tombs and fountains, and spiralling plaster forms.
Ice Age Sculpture
10 April – 20 June 2010
Gallery 4
When does sculpture begin? This exhibition presents eighteen Ice Age objects from the British Museum which suggest that its origins could reach as far back as 13,000 years.
Alan Johnston: Drawing a Shadow: No Object
18 February – 1 May 2010
Main Galleries
Alan Johnston’s drawings both reflect and subtly reconfigure the architectural spaces they inhabit, highlighting the galleries as sculptural spaces in their own right.
2009
Objects of Contemplation: Natural sculptures from the Qing dynasty
12 December 2009 – 7 March 2010
Gallery 4
When does a rock become a sculpture? This small but exquisite exhibition is concerned with remarkable rocks collected in seventeenth-century China.
The Developing Process: The sculptor’s education in drawings and photography
9 October 2009 – 2 May 2010
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
The Developing Process explores the ways in which sculptors were taught to think three-dimensionally from the late nineteenth century through to the 1960s.
Sculpture in Painting
8 October 2009 – 10 January 2010
Main Galleries
This exhibition explores the relationship between art in two and three dimensions, looking at the dialogue and interplay between painting and sculpture.
Subject/Sitter/Maker: Portraits from an eighteenth-century artistic circle
14 August – 14 November 2009
Gallery 4
Offering a unique opportunity to compare likenesses in two and three dimensions, this study exhibition focuses on five works which depict two of eighteenth-century London’s leading lights.
Art in Public Places: an archive of the Public Art Development Trust
29 May – 29 August 2009
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Established in 1983, the Public Art Development Trust (PADT) defined public art in the UK for twenty years. This exhibition celebrates the archive of the PADT, which was acquired by the Henry Moore Institute in 2005.
The New Monumentality
29 May – 29 August 2009
Main Galleries
Gerard Byrne, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Dorit Margreiter explore the attraction of modern post-war buildings for artists born in the heyday of monumental architecture, as typified by London’s Barbican Centre and the University of Leeds.
Concrete and Poetry: Drawings for an art museum by Lina Bo Bardi
3 April – 4 July 2009
Gallery 4
The first UK exhibition to explore the vision of the architect Lina Bo Bardi focuses on her drawings for the iconic Museum of Art in São Paolo (MASP), designed and built between 1957 and 1968.
Box, Body, Burial: The Sculptural Imagination of Keith Arnatt
8 February – 26 April 2009
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Through his preoccupations with the box, body and burial in the early part of his career, Arnatt challenged sculptural convention long before he was seen as a photographer.
Asta Gröting Sculpture: 1987-2008
8 February – 26 April 2009
Main Galleries
Selected by Gröting herself, this exhibition of both her early and latest works appear at first like mysterious props left scattered across a stage, as if they might have a role within a larger and unspecified narrative.
2008
Dalou in England: Portraits of Womanhood (1871-1879)
22 November 2008 – 22 February 2009
Gallery 4
Dalou, through his images of women, revealed and questioned the stratified nature of modern society and its strict demarcations between the classes.
Sculpture in the Home
1 October 2008 – 4 January 2009
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Re-staging a post-war initiative that endeavoured to make sculpture part of everyday life, displaying contemporary sculptures in gallery installations suggestive of modern domestic interiors.
Taking Shape: Finding sculpture in the decorative arts
30 September 2008 – 4 January 2009
Main Galleries
Taking Shape focuses on the inventive imagination of Baroque and Rococo that dominated sculpture and the decorative arts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and presents it in a new light.
Unfinished Business: Mark Wilsher
26 July – 26 October 2008
Gallery 4
This series of experimental ‘photo-drawings’, which modify and recontextualise abstract sculpture of the 1960s and 70s, is the culmination of Mark Wilsher’s Research Fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute.
The Object Quality of the Problem: on the Space of Palestine/Israel
31 May – 26 July 2008
Main Galleries
Responding to this very particular set of geo-political contexts and current affairs, this exhibition attempts to reconcile the two-dimensional nature of contemporary documentary art with the wider sculptural field.
Prospects and Interiors: Sculptors’ Drawings of Inner Space
30 May – 22 August 2008
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Based around a core of works in the Leeds collection, Prospects and Interiors addresses the sculptor’s concern to find a way of representing space as matter.
Heart of Darkness: Ivory carving and Belgian colonialism
4 April – 28 June 2008
Gallery 4
Taking its title from Joseph Conrad’s celebrated novel, this exhibition examines the revival of ivory sculpture within the context of the brutal colonial exploitation of the Congo by Léopold II, King of Belgium.
Against Nature: The hybrid forms of modern sculpture
7 February – 4 May 2008
Main Galleries
Sculpture has frequently been used as a medium of metamorphosis, its malleable materials allowing fantastic forms to become real as it mixes human, animal and vegetal components.
By Leafy Ways: Early works by Ivor Abrahams
7 February – 3 May 2008
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
In By Leafy Ways, artist Ivor Abrahams invites viewers into the strange world of the English suburban garden, in which ideas of nature and artifice are subtly opposed.
2007
Thomas Schütte: Fake/Function
22 September 2007 – 6 January 2008
Main Galleries
Even before he left the Art Academy in Düsseldorf, Thomas Schütte’s work was much in demand. This exhibition brings together the work he made in those early years of his career.
Indoors and Out: The Sculpture and Design of Bernard Schottlander
22 September 2007 – 6 January 2008
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This retrospective on the work of multidisciplinary German artist Bernard Schottlander highlights the dialogue between his interior design skills and interest in outdoor sculpture.
kissingcousins: A fellowship project by Jane Simpson and Sarah Staton
29 June – 29 September 2007
Gallery 4
What happens when two artists are let loose in a museum store? Jane Simpson and Sarah Staton were invited to select works from the Leeds sculpture collections and curate them into an exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute.
Towards a New Laocoon
13 May – 11 August 2007
Main Galleries
This exhibition looks at the sculptural aspects of Laocoon through a British lens, focusing on how the sculpture group has been re-interpreted by artists over time.
Drawing on Sculpture: Graphic Interventions on the Photographic Surface
12 May – 11 August 2007
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Taking a fresh look at the relationship between sculpture and photography, and the subtle ways in which drawing allows artists to use the flexibility of a two-dimensional medium to define and describe sculpture.
Modelling Charlotte Perriand: A Project by Sadie Murdoch
3 March – 26 May 2007
Gallery 4
Artist Sadie Murdoch reinterprets the classic 1928 image of the Chaise Longue, asking questions about feminism, authorship and identity.
Figuring Space: Sculpture/Furniture from Mies to Moore
18 January – 31 March 2007
Main Galleries
Exploring the shared space of modern furniture and modern sculpture.
Creation Myths: Epstein’s ‘Flenite Relief’ of 1913 in focus
3 November 2007 – 11 February 2008
Gallery 4
Radical now, and even more so in the years before the First World War, Epstein’s ‘Flenite Relief’ shows the act of giving birth: a baby emerges from between the legs of a mother whose body is bent double.
2006
Experimental Photography from the Bauhaus Sculpture Workshop
16 December 2006 – 18 February 2007
Gallery 4
This exhibition explores how innovative photographic practice became central to the activity of the Bauhaus sculpture workshop in Weimar Germany.
Leeds (Partial View)
23 September – 16 December 2006
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
In a series of evocative photographs made during his fellowship at the Institute in 2005, Frederico Câmara presents us with a vision of Leeds that is both mysterious and surprising.
Imi Knoebel: Primary Structures 1966/2006
23 September – 16 December 2006
Main Galleries
Displaying early and recent works, this exhibition examines the links between painting and sculpture, demonstrating the constructed qualities of painting in its relation to installation.
Charlotte von Poehl: The Notepiece
25 August – 19 November 2006
Gallery 4
Drawing on the personal writings and diaries of artists Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt, von Poehl has created an exhibition that reflects on their thoughts, engaging the viewer in a personal dialogue.
The New Man: Alfred Gilbert’s Heroic Nudes 1882-1895
11 June – 5 August 2006
Gallery 4
In contrast to current media stereotypes, this exhibition finds its place in the late Victorian period, when ‘new men’ were not the masculine icons of today but aesthetes and dandies.
Paper, Stone, Flesh and Blood: Transforming Views of Sculpture in French Revolutionary Prints
24 May – 26 August 2006
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This exhibition shows how prints chart the shifting values of the French Revolution through sculpture, as France moved from absolute monarchy to revolutionary republic.
Antinous: the face of the Antique
24 May – 26 August 2006
Main Galleries
The first exhibition dedicated to Antique sculpture at the Institute explores the mythical image of Antinous, a beautiful youth and lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who drowned mysteriously in the Nile before his 20th birthday.
Giorgio Sadotti: From Navels to Nipples Henry Moore
2 May – 3 June 2006
Gallery 4
Drawing from the Henry Moore Institute’s Research Library, Sadotti has created a book by systematically making circular holes in images. These disks, their radius dicated by the distance between the models’ navel and closest nipple, are displayed in this exhibition.
Freud’s Sculpture
22 February – 22 April 2006
Gallery 4
On the eve of the 150th anniversary of Sigmund Freud’s birth, the Henry Moore Institute in association with the Freud Museum presents a unique opportunity to explore Freud’s relationship with sculpture.
Shaping Modern Sculpture: Stephen Gilbert and Jocelyn Chewett in post-war Paris
5 February – 15 April 2006
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
A new angle on post-war constructivism and geometric abstraction with the first British exhibition of the work of Stephen Gilbert and Jocelyn Chewett.
Espaço Aberto / Espaço Fechado: Sites for sculpture in modern Brazil
5 February – 14 April 2006
Main Galleries
This exhibition reveals how fluctuations in political, social and economic stability in Brazil over the past fifty years have helped shape ideas about sculpture, as well as how sculpture represents those events.
2005
Thomas Woolner: Seeing Sculpture Through Photography
5 November 2005 – 5 February 2006
Gallery 4
Best known for his affiliation to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Woolner’s sculpture has been largely forgotten, but new research shows that in the field of photography Woolner deserves to be remembered.
New Acquisitions on Paper: Phyllidia Barlow, Sarah Staton and Cecile Johnson Soliz
14 September 2005 – 7 January 2006
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Though different in style and execution, these three contemporary British sculptors are bound by a common theme that places the sculptural subject in a space with an almost imaginary context.
Bronze: The Power of Life and Death
13 September 2005 – 7 January 2006
Main Galleries
Bringing to light the rich symbolic language of sculpture’s most familiar material. Though bronze may be seen as a traditional if not an old-fashioned material, it is still very much in evidence in contemporary work, often transformed in its appearance, but nevertheless present.
Jaki Irvine: Plans for Forgotten Works
2 July – 2 October 2005
Gallery 4
As a result of her Fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute, Jaki Irvine has created a series of haunting works through exploring some of the least expected areas of the Institute’s archive.
Shallow Space: Relief Sculpture from the Collection
7 May – 7 August 2005
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Shallow Space presents classic examples of relief sculpture alongside surrealist constructions and quirkier anomalies, such as reliefs made from nails, glove stretchers and the moving paper circles designed by Duchamp.
Ettore Spalletti
5 May – 7 August 2005
Main Galleries
Italian artist Ettore Spalletti produces work that lies between painting and sculpture, working on shaped grounds and supports with a loose and living surface of coloured pigment.
Medieval and Modern: Direct Carving in the Work of Gill and Barlach
4 March – 5 June 2005
Gallery 4
This focused study exhibition looks at the work of two artists – Eric Gill, in Britain, and Ernst Barlach, in Germany – who styled their work and their own personas into an image of medievalist tradition.
The Third Campaign: A Project by Neal White
8 January – 27 March 2005
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
In a conceptual campaign designed to re-ignite debate over Jacob Epstein’s sculptural scheme on the British Medical Association building in London’s Strand, White challenged the viewer to re-evaluate their response to public sculpture.
2004
Play/Ground: William Turnbull and the Horizontal Relief
5 November 2004 – 6 February 2005
Gallery 4
Play/Ground investigates the viewer’s relation to horizontal relief, allowing it to be considered not only as a sculptural form, but also as a game and playground to be explored.
Depth of Field: the place of relief in the time of Donatello
21 September 2004 – 27 March 2005
Main Galleries
Relief sculpture fascinates and perplexes, hovering between simple decoration and full-scale pictorial illusion. This exhibition examines the nature of relief at the beginning of the Renaissance period.
Mother Figure: Modernist Maternities from the Leeds Sculpture Collections
21 September – 5 December 2004
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
The mother and child motif in art is potent and enduring. It permeates most aspects of cultural history, maintaining a complex psychological bearing on our consciousness even today.
Carey Young: Disclaimer
2 July – 2 October 2004
Gallery 4
Investigating the increasing incorporation of the personal and public domains into the realm of the commercial, Young’s exhibition explores the connections between legal ‘disclaimers’ and notions of negative space.
Jacqueline Donachie: In the Arms of Strangers
8 May – 8 August 2004
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Jacqueline Donachie is a Scottish artist who works with drawing, photography, sculpture and installation.
With Hidden Noise: Sculpture, Video and Ventriloquism
8 May – 8 August 2004
Main Galleries
Challenging the idea that sculpture is a silent art, With Hidden Noise presents a selection of objects, sculptures and videos that are both evocative and illustrative of voice and voice throwing.
My Personal Museum: ‘Ego Geometria Sum’ from the Helen Chadwick Archive
6 March – 5 June 2004
Gallery 4
This exhibition reveals the twists and turns of Chadwick’s imagination as well as latent meanings, which she never exposed or publicised in her lifetime.
2003
Making History: Edinburgh 1845
27 October 2003 – 9 February 2004
Gallery 4
Drawing on the Hill and Adamson collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, this exhibition examines an important symbol of Scottish national identity: the monument to Sir Walter Scott in Edinburgh.
Other Criteria: Sculpture in 20th Century Britain
26 September 2003 – 28 March 2004
Main Galleries
Taking stock of one hundred years of British sculpture, Other Criteria celebrates the diversity and ambition of art in this field.
Refashioning the Figure: The Sketchbooks of Archipenko
25 September 2003 – 4 January 2004
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Archipenko exemplifies the many-faceted nature of the European avant-garde. This exhibition asked to what extent should we understand him as an influence, and to what extent as a mirror, reflecting a community of ideas.
Liadin Cooke: Ballroom (ornament)
6 July – 4 October 2003
Gallery 4
Inspired by the lost or the forgotten, Liadin Cooke isolates and transforms details until only a trace of their original appearance remains – a process like the distortion of memories through the passage of time.
A Fine Tomorrow: Sculpture and Socialism in mid-century Britain
31 May – 31 August 2003
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Drawn from the collections of Leeds Museums & Galleries, this display tackles a range of work with left-wing affiliations, examining the connections between political and artistic tendencies.
Scultura Lingua Morta: Sculpture From Fascist Italy
29 May – 29 August 2003
Main Galleries
The ventennio fascista (1922-42) is a deeply complex phenomenon, combining progressive innovation with conservative historicism, left-wing inspiration with right-wing methodology.
A Kind of Magic: Talismans, Charms and Amulets from The British Museum
1 April – 28 June 2003
Gallery 4
Exploring the shadowy area where magic merges with religion, science, medicine and superstition.
Refashioning the Figure: Gaston Lachaise and ‘Elevation’
8 February – 4 May 2003
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Elevation was an ongoing theme in Lachaise’s work. Whether dancing, walking or reclining, the figures in his sculpture all seem to float, their feet hardly touching the ground.
Job Koelewijn: Try and See It Your Way
8 February – 4 May 2003
Main Galleries
Through a series of four installations, Koelewijn invites us to explore the space within and beyond our visual boundary, sensitising us to it, and focusing our looking in new ways.
Simon Periton: Flag
6 January – 16 March 2003
Gallery 4
Simon Periton makes doilies, cutting them laboriously by hand from layers of coloured paper to create complex visual and sculptural effects. Like the most shallow of reliefs, they hover precariously between two and three dimensions.
Draped and Undraped Life
8 February – 3 May 2003
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This exhibition looks at how sculptors have articulated the human body – both with and without clothes – and features a variety of mythological and ‘everyday’ subjects. Clothing is used to both reveal and conceal the body, and to coordinate figurative sculpture’s meanings.
2002
Model Forms: Sculpture/Architecture in 50s and 60s Britain
1 October 2002 – 5 January 2003
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This exhibition focuses on a period when the formal characteristics of sculpture and architecture often merged, and features works by designers with interests in both fields.
Wonder: Painted Sculpture from Medieval England
1 October 2002 – 5 January 2003
Main Galleries
Wonder is an exhibition that explores the combination of belief and disbelief that characterised the medieval understanding of sculpture. It presents polychrome sculpture in three forms of encounter: one of intimacy, one of monumentality, and one of perception.
Changing Face: Masks from The British Museum
15 September – 5 December 2002
Gallery 4
Masking is a universal phenomenon, but the significance of masks varies greatly from country to country. Changing Face explores some of the key differences in the uses masks have had in diverse cultures and periods.
Catching Some Air: Library Drawings by Bik Van der Pol
1 June – 1 September 2002
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Collecting, copying, reappropriating and transforming… Bik Van der Pol turned a Fellowship at the Institute’s Research Library into a years-long drawing exercise.
The Object Sculpture
30 May – 30 August 2002
Main Galleries
Three contemporary artists – Tobias Rehberger, Joëlle Tuerlinckx and Keith Wilson – each with a very different conception of what ‘sculpture’ can be, were invited to curate The Object Sculpture together.
Christina Mackie: The Interzone
21 March – 25 May 2002
Gallery 4
Christina Mackie’s installation is a composite in which the manufactured world relays the natural world in different kinds of images and artefacts.
Shine: sculpture and surface in the 1920s and 30s
16 February – 12 May 2002
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
What does it mean for a sculpture to shine? This exhibition explores how a sculpture’s surface can communicate its maker’s intent and illustrate concepts of movement, music and value.
Second Skin: Historical Life Casting and Contemporary Culture
16 February – 12 May 2002
Main Galleries
Second Skin explores the connections between the process of life casting and figurative sculpture, and compares the differences in how casting was used by nineteenth-century sculptors and how it is used today.
2001
Unidentified Museum Objects: Curiosities from The British Museum
12 December 2001 – 28 February 2002
Gallery 4
Unidentified Museum Objects brings together intriguing items from across the collections of The British Museum which are only partly understood.
Bethan Huws: On What?
26 September – 30 November 2001
Gallery 4
Bethan Huws: On What? displays six texts in pencil on the walls of the gallery, exploring the complex relationships between language, thought, representation and art.
Jean Dubuffet: Maquettes for Monuments
25 September 2001 – 6 January 2002
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Designed as models to eventually be expanded into large-scale public projects, Jean Dubuffet’s maquettes emphasise the interconnection between art and life, and between the private and public domains.
Close Encounters: the sculptor’s studio in the age of the camera
25 September 2001 – 6 January 2002
Main Galleries
Close Encounters looks at how photography articulated a changing notion of the studio and of sculptural endeavour, redefining the objects and environments of sculpture itself.
The Sculpted Word: Inscriptions from the British Museum
10 June – 15 September 2001
Gallery 4
Carving, marking, embossing, engraving – The Sculpted Word examines the art of inscribing as a form of sculpture, comparing objects from diverse periods and cultures.
Taking Positions: Figurative Sculpture and the Third Reich
26 May – 26 August 2001
Main Galleries
Encompassing sculptors whose careers flourished during the Third Reich as well as those who effectively made their work in isolation, this exhibitions represents a cross-section of those who stayed in Germany and found a way to continuing practising art – even if sometimes in ‘inner exile’.
Eric Kennington: ‘The War God’ and other works
26 May – 26 August 2001
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This exhibition looks at works made by Kennington during the inter-war period, a time preoccupied with fears and premonitions of war, often projected onto representations of male bodies or anxious images of masculinity.
Siobhan Liddell: Curious About Existence
30 March – 26 May 2001
Gallery 4
In the first of a series of contemporary artists’ projects, Siobhan Liddell has made new ‘drawings’ especially for Gallery 4.
Le Corbusier: The Sculptural Collaboration With Savina
3 February – 29 April 2001
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This exhibition takes ten polychrome works (1940-64) that focus on the arrangement of separate elements on or within a frame.
Wiebke Siem: Collection
3 February – 28 April 2001
Main Galleries
Bringing together Wiebke Siem’s four ‘Werkgruppen’ (workgroups) – costumes, accessories, wigs, masks, carts, stones, textiles and toys – this exhibition asks subversive questions about the possibilities of making art.
Homes for the Soul: Micro-architecture in Medieval and Contemporary Art
17 January – 18 March 2001
Gallery 4
Bringing together a selection of small-scale representations of architectural forms from the Middle Ages and the past twenty years.
2000
Chris Evans: Gemini Sculpture Park
27 September 2000 – 7 January 2001
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Gemini Sculpture Park refers simultaneously to several concerns: the power of branding, recognition of the business park, visualisation of corporate identity, and the possibility for sculpture to embody personal aspirations.
Return to Life: A New Look at the Portrait Bust
27 September 2000 – 7 January 2001
Main Galleries
Rather than trace the history of the portrait bust, this exhibition looks at how an outer form might mask more intimate inflections, setting up a dialogue between a portrait bust and its viewer, and a conversation between one portrait bust and another.
New Acquisitions: Works on Paper by Bethan Huws, Tania Kovats and Cornelia Parker
24 May – 26 August 2000
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This exhibition focuses on recent work by female British sculptors acquired for the Leeds Sculpture Collections: watercolours by Bethan Huws, landscape drawings by Tania Kovats and photographs by Cornelia Parker.
Hounds in Leash: The Dog in 18th and 19th Century Sculpture
24 May – 26 August 2000
Main Galleries
British and French sculpture from the 1750s to the 1880s highlight the varied relationships between owners and their dogs, from pampered pets to the ferocious guardian of the underworld, Cerberus.
Belvedere
5 February – 29 April 2000
Main Galleries and Reception
An exhibition about architecture, and how it is represented outside of itself; about the house, and our relationship to it; about framing views within its architecture; about a seemingly endless circularity.
Eternal Return: Six Representations of Cycles of Time
19 January 2000 – 5 January 2001
Gallery 4
Eternal Return is an exhibition about sculpture and images of cyclical time. Over the course of the year 2000, six consecutive displays of single works present forms that represent particular aspects of cycles of time.
Dwelling Drawings by Etienne-Martin
5 February – 29 April 2000
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Etienne-Martin (1913-95) made his name in France as a maker of ‘dwelling-sculptures’: artworks with exteriors and interiors, which open and close, and which the viewer can enter inside. All these dwellings derive from the sculptor’s memory of his childhood home.
1999
Sculpture from the New Europe: Public Sculpture for the Two Germanies 1945-68
1 October 1999 – 16 January 2000
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Featuring work by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Fritz Cremer, Bernhard Heiliger, Matschinsky-Denninghoff and Werner Stötzer.
Andrea Blum: Mobile Institution
8 August 1999 – 3 January 2000
Main Galleries and Reception
Andrea Blum’s ‘Mobile Institute’ reflects a period of change at the Institute as the galleries are being refurbished.
Claude Heath: Drawing from Sculpture
9 May – 30 August 1999
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Working blindfolded, Claude Heath spent two weeks making drawings from the Leeds Sculpture Collection, tracing objects with one hand whilst drawing his response to it with the other.
A Sense of Heaven: 16th Century Boxwood Carvings for Private Devotion
9 May – 26 June 1999
Gallery 4
A display of scented boxwood rosary beads, alongside a boxwood altar-piece and a silver pomander.
Katarzyna Kobro
25 March – 26 June 1999
Main galleries
Celebrating the centenary of her birth, Katarzyna Kobro is the first retrospective exhibition of the Constructivist artist’s work in the UK.
Survivals from a Sculptor’s Studio: Frederick Thrupp (1812-1951)
21 January – 28 February 1999
Gallery 4
Though his name is largely unfamiliar now, Thrupp left a legacy to the present day in the form of his studio collection – marbles, plaster models, clay maquettes and drawings amassed during the course of his life.
Graham Fagen: Subversive on the Side of Lunatic
10 May – 27 June 1999
Sculpture Research Library and Leeds Art Gallery
Graham Fagen placed similar objects in the public spaces of both galleries. Visitors could then use the accompanying book to lead them on a journey through the spaces, following the steps of the characters.
Survivals from a Sculptor’s Studio: Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973)
18 March – 29 April 1999
Gallery 4
Maquettes from the inter-war years show Lipchitz’s move out of cubism and into narrative subjects embodying the theme of struggle.
Making Their Mark: Artists’ Works on Paper from the Sculpture Collections
30 January – 25 April 1999
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
An exhibition of contemporary prints and drawings, which includes some recent acquisitions to the collection by artists such as Jonathan Callan, Adam Colton and Claude Heath.
1998
Rodin: Rhythm and Ritual
24 September 1998 – 3 January 1999
Gallery 4
Rodin’s drawings of the Royal Cambodian dancers capture every variation in movement, from relaxed poses and quiet, graceful gestures of the hands, to ecstatic, stamping dance steps.
David Cheeseman: The Wherewithal
23 September 1998 – 13 January 1999
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
David Cheeseman’s site-specific installation engages with objects from the Leeds sculpture collection, exploring the dynamics of space, the physical substance of objects, the problems of making, and the tensions at work between the private life of objects and their public display.
Here and Now: Experiences in Sculpture
23 September 1998 – 28 February 1999
Main Galleries
An episodic exhibition, featuring seven overlapping single-person shows at the Henry Moore Institute and the Church of Saint Paulinus in Catterick. Featuring artists Alan Charlton, Paul Etienne Lincoln, Fred Sandback, Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir, Karl Torok, Richard Tuttle, and Jeff Wall.
Mapping, Space and Line
23 May – 16 August 1998
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
An exhibition of works from the Leeds Collections.
artranspennine98
22 May – 16 August 1998
Main Galleries and Gallery 4
artranspennine98 was an exhibition that combined art with people and place, spread across the whole of the North of England. It featured sixty-four artists working on forty projects, between Liverpool in the west and Hull in the east.
Work and the Image
29 January – 19 April 1998
Gallery 4, Sculpture Study Galleries and the Sculpture Research Library
Three linked displays explore the image of the worker amid the industrialisation of Britain, and the role of the artist as observer and outsider: Henry Moore’s sketchbooks of coalminers in Castleford; Ghisha Koenig’s work within the factories of post-war Britain; and Hamo Thornycroft’s The Mower.
Point and Line to Plane: Sculpture from the Leeds Collections
29 January – 19 April 1998
Main Galleries
Demonstrating different ways of ‘seeing’, this exhibition conveys the transition from sculptors’ notebooks – sculptures in line – through to works in iron, bronze and stone – drawings in space.
1997
The Space of the Page
23 September 1997 – 4 January 1998
Gallery 4
The Space of the Page examines books and other printed forms made by artists over the last thirty years, viewing them as art objects in their own right in contrast to typical associations with craft or bookbinding.
At One Remove
23 September 1997 – 4 January 1998
Main Galleries
The first contemporary group show at the Institute, At One Remove looks at how works with little material substance take the viewer outside themselves, into a space that is somehow other, elsewhere or at one remove.
More and Less: the early work of Richard Long
20 July – 23 August 1997
Gallery 4
Responding to the acquisition into the Leeds Sculpture Collections of a pot by Richard Long, made in 1965, this exhibition looks at work made by Long between 1964 and 1969: a time of tangential explorations, including his participation in the seminal 1969 exhibition Op Losse Schroeven.
Robert Morris: Recent Felt Pieces and Drawings
20 July – 23 August 1997
Main Galleries
Felt has long been a favourite material used by Morris to inform and question the realm of sculpture. His work explores the space reducing, physical presence of material, the spiritual and aesthetic adventure of creation, and the artistic exploitation of natural laws.
Work in Progress: Michael Kidner
21 May – 23 August 1997
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This exhibition charts Michael Kidner’s ongoing experiments with colour and space, as something fluid and unframed. It features works on paper, constructions from the artist’s studio, and new works made in-situ.
Polymonochromes: David Batchelor
17 January – 6 April 1997
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Derived from the industrial colour chart rather than the artist’s colour circle, these not white-sculptures help put some intensity – and some colour – back into the genre of the monochrome.
Vanishing Point
11 September 1997 – 4 January 1998
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Prints and drawings from the collection of Leeds Museums & Galleries, demonstrating a shared interest in perspective.
1996
The Colour of Sculpture
12 December 1996 – 6 April 1997
Main Galleries
The Colour of Sculpture presents works in a wide range of materials: marble, metals, precious stones, glass and ivory, and shows how they were ‘painted’ to effect different tints and patinas.
Peter Scheemakers: The Famous Statuary, 1691-1781
2 October 1996 – 5 January 1997
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
This exhibition features early sketches and photographs of sculpture by Peter Scheemakers (1691-1781), one of the most successful sculptors in eighteenth century England.
David Nash: Line of Cut
4 September – 24 November 1996
Main Galleries and Gallery 4
Line of Cut focuses on David Nash’s interest in geometry and abstract form. A rigorous exercise of control underlies Nash’s sculpture, which is characterised by a tension between freedom and discipline, between nature and the artist.
Laurent Pariente
23 May – 3 August 1996
Main Galleries
Laurent Pariente is a young French artist who has achieved a unique synthesis of sculpture, architecture and painting. His work creates a gesamtkunstwerk of human experience to intrigue and engage the mind and the senses.
Sleep in Sculpture: Babies from The Bowes
3 May – 27 July 1996
Gallery 4
Sleep is an interesting and appropriate subject for sculpture. Sculpture is always ‘still’, but we read life into it; are these babies about to waken from their slumbers, or are they memorials to lives that were too brief?
Duel: Tracy Mackenna and Karla Sachse
31 March – 7 August 1996
Gallery 4
Duel is a collaborative project between the artists Tracy Mackenna and Karla Sachse, exploring the dialectics of presentation and representation, visibility and invisibility, presence and absence.
James Lee Byars: The Monument to Language
1 February – 30 March 1996
Main Galleries
The Monument to Language is a gilded bronze sphere, three metres in diameter. Gold and language (like monument and actions) are the material and parameters underlying most of James Lee Byars’ work.
The Sculptures: Jasper Johns
17 April – 29 June 1996
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Exploring themes of illusion versus reality, Jasper Johns’s (b. 1930) bronze representations of beer cans, light bulbs and everyday objects, so carefully sculpted and painted that it is difficult to tell them from the originals, have been taken as the beginning of Pop Art.
On Sculpture and Time: Lauri Antilla, Jussi Heikkila, Markku Kivinen, and Marko Vuokola
17 January – 30 March 1996
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
We think about humanity in terms of time: our working day and our free time, our youth and old age. The works of these Finnish artists from three different generations reflect the conception of time and natural space in their home country.
1995
Auke de Vries: Models and Drawings Towards a Recent Sculpture for a Public Space
27 September – 30 December 1995
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Models and sketches show the material process involved in the development of a recent sculpture commission by Auke de Vries, one of the Netherlands’ leading sculptors.
Gravity’s Angel
27 September – 30 December 1995
Main Galleries and Gallery 4
Weight and light, matter and mind: the title Gravity’s Angel is designed to fasten attention on the properties of sculpture, its physical condition and its mental aspiration.
Paule Vézelay
7 June – 1 September 1995
Gallery 4
Vézelay is best known for her reliefs, but for an extraordinary year, between 1935 and 1936, she made a small series of striking white plaster sculptures. One of these sculptures, Dish with Little Boat, was recently acquired by the Leeds Sculpture Collections, and forms the starting point for this exhibition.
The Very Impress of the Object: Sculpture and Photography from Fox-Talbot to the Present Day
7 June – 5 August 1995
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
The why and how works of art have been photographed since the mid-nineteenth century is a complex issue, and is explored here through photos of sculptors and their work.
Gabo’s Stones: Naum Gabo
16 February – 5 May 1995
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
While Gabo’s constructivist works in metal and plastic are well documented, less explored are his direct carvings in stone. This focused study exhibition brings together sixteen of Gabo’s stone carvings, from 1930 through to the 1960s.
Stephen Cox: Surfaces and Stones of Egypt
16 February – 5 May 1995
Main galleries
Stephen Cox’s practice is characterised by working amongst carvers in other traditions, as a way of getting physically and spiritually closer to the origins of our own aesthetic sensibilities.
arp : reliefs
7 June – 2 September 1995
Main Galleries
Spanning 50 years, this exhibition examines the wooden relief sculpture of Hans Arp (1886-1966) – from early coloured assemblages, through jokey motifs of lips and moustaches, to all-white constellations and late pieces in plain unpainted wood.
Jyrki Siukonen: Christmas Sauna
9 January – 28 January 1995
Gallery 4
Installation by Jyrki Siukonen, the Gregory Fellow in Sculpture, University of Leeds.
1994
Reproduction in Sculpture – Dilution or Increase?
10 December 1994 – 30 January 1995
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Focusing on the reproductive techniques used in the manufacture of sculpture, this exhibition features work by Jacob Epstein, Alfred Gilbert and Rachel Whiteread – and sculpture where the artist has not touched the work at all.
Frank Dobson: Selected Sculpture 1915-54
19 October – 31 December 1994
Main Galleries
Frank Dobson’s work was undeniably a synthesis of many different styles, from the Mediterranean to the Far East, though always firmly remained his own.
Serge Spitzer: Index 1972-92
29 March 1994 – 10 June 1994
Main Galleries and Reception
Over the past twenty years Serge Spitzer has devised a kind of sculptural language, building on a vocabulary revealed by the reductive practices of the previous generation of minimal and conceptual artists.
Medardo Rosso
13 July – 20 August 1994
Main Galleries
A South Bank Centre touring exhibition.
Rosso’s Contemporaries
13 July – 20 August 1994
Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Presenting a selection of sculptural works from Italian artists working contemporaneously to Medardo Rosso (1858-1928), including Pietro Magni, Ettore Ferrari, Guiseppe Grandi and Vincenzo Gemito.
1993
Cell : Cella : Celda
10 November 1993 – 5 February 1994
Main Galleries and Gallery 4
This exhibition brings together four mid-career European artists – Edward Allington, Vittorio Messina, Jaume Plensa and Andrew Sabin – to create new works at the Henry Moore Institute.
Sol LeWitt: Structures 1962-93 and Drawings 1958-92
11 August – 17 October 1993
Main Galleries and the Upper Sculpture Study Gallery
Sol LeWitt’s structures established his central position within the Minimal and Conceptual art movements which emerged in New York during the 1960s.
Romanesque: Stone Sculpture from Medieval England
22 April – 18 July 1993
Main Galleries
The inaugural exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute presents some of the greatest surviving examples of English medieval sculpture.