Photo: installation shot, Gallery 2. Photo: Roger Sinek, 2003. © Henry Moore Institute.
Packing her chisel and mallet, Penelope Parkin headed to Yorkshire to explore the history of 20th century British sculpture.
Other Criteria: Sculpture in 20th Century Britain celebrates the tenth anniversary of The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and runs from September 27 until March 28, 2004.
The exhibition evaluates 100 years of British sculpture and attempts to offer a wider perspective on the work of a sculptor, taking stock of the preparatory material and documentation used in producing a finished piece.
Institute Curator Dr Penelope Curtis reflected on the Institute’s progress over the past ten years proclaiming that a tenth birthday "seemed like a good time to recognise what [the gallery] had achieved so far."
Photo: installation shot, Gallery 2. Photo: Roger Sinek, 2003. © Henry Moore Institute.
Lord Mayor of Leeds, Neil Taggart added warm congratulations to all involved in the project stating that in his opinion culture wasn’t something that should be left till last in the Local Authority Budget.
Certainly museum staff must have been busy collating the vast array of archived materials displayed.
Gallery One draws attention to a range of papers and miniature models such as Sir William Reid Dick’s superb maquette for Two Greyhounds, 1927 and Sir Jacob Epstein’s annotated copy of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, 1904, a drawing for a sculptural figure added to the volume’s text.
Photo: installation shot, Gallery 2. Photo: Roger Sinek, 2003. © Henry Moore Institute.
Important National curios such as Epstein’s inscribed parchment contract to build Oscar Wilde’s tomb are also exhibited along with three elegant photographs of the Queen Mother used by Franta Belsky for a portrait bust in 1962.
Gallery Two provides the exhibition’s dramatic centrepiece, an eye-catching display devoted to a smashed chandelier. Eric Kennington’s Boy on an Engine surveys the damage, diagonally opposite is Peter Peri’s careworn Woman with Red Hair.
The two strategically placed pieces add a modern take to Henry Moore’s Mother and Child sculpture, indicating the fragile and sometimes traumatic relationship that can exist between parent and child.
More personal curios are displayed in Gallery Three such as Richard Long’s small concertina book A Walk Past Standing Stones, 1980 and price list for Betty Rea’s sculptures from Looking at People at the Whitworth Art Galley.
Photo: installation shot, Gallery 2. Photo: Roger Sinek, 2003. © Henry Moore Institute.
Lucia Nogueira’s obituary by Adrian Searle in The Guardian, June 23, 1998 stands out from the mass of documentation on show and provides a vivid tribute to her life with these words:
"There are artists whose personality has such force that it becomes inseparable from the things they produce. I cannot set the stage, playful, painful and above all intense sculptures and installations of Lucia Nogueira apart from the artist herself."
In short, ‘Other Criteria’ opens the door to a wider world of sculpture and provides an insight into the all-consuming process from commission to finished piece as well as taking a nostalgic look at the minutiae of the sculptor’s role in society. It makes contemplative viewing.
