Henry Moore believed tactility to be paramount, “as an aesthetic dimension”, to each the making and the experiencing of sculpture. He actually needed us to have the ability to contact his work. Nonetheless, its worth and significance now implies that doing so in most museums can be thought of a giant no-no—and for anybody for whom contact offers sight, that is massively proscribing.
The Henry Moore Institute’s new present, Past the Visible—the primary main UK exhibition of sculpture to centre blind and partially blind artists and curators—unpacks the worth of the haptic and the way notion entails all of the senses. It consists of Moore’s Mom and Baby: Arch from 1959 and Barry Flanagan’s Elephant, from 1981. Each artists had been related to Tate’s landmark 1981 exhibition, Sculpture for the Blind.
However, as Ken Wilder, a professor of aesthetics and the co-curator of the institute’s exhibition says, this new present turns that very notion on its head. “The concept of sculpture for the blind is a bit odd as a result of it suggests a particular kind of sculpture that by some means for the blind and all different sculpture is just not,” he explains.
As an alternative, Wilder and co-curators Aaron McPeake, an artist and affiliate lecturer at Chelsea Faculty of Arts who’s registered blind, and analysis curator on the institute Clare O’Dowd, have sought to offer guests with “a vocabulary of contact”. The trio describe this as a set of propositions that encourage guests to concentrate.
For O’Dowd, the expertise has modified the best way she experiences all exhibitions. “I will by no means be the identical once more,” she says. For the establishment, the method has been “the steepest studying curve ever”.
Preliminary session workshops at Tate Trendy and the institute put the lived expertise of individuals with completely different visible acuities entrance and centre, with their enter shaping all the things from advertising to venture administration. Emails had been despatched in bigger font sizes, and posters across the institute’s residence metropolis of Leeds promote the present via sensor-triggered sound.
The exhibition’s format was additionally a key consideration. Plentiful seating was added as a result of exploring works via contact and audio takes time, and gallery employees and wall textual content panels are all clad in vibrant yellow as a result of excessive distinction is essential for partially blind guests. Textured flooring mats sign when works are in attain. And all of the objects are there to be dealt with.
British sculptor David Johnson’s work, Nuggets of Embodiment, contains 10,000 stone-plaster Digestive biscuits that includes phrases in Braille
Joanne Crawford
This consists of works by 16 worldwide artists, from British sculptor Lenka Clayton to New Orleans-born Emilie Louise Gossiaux. Most are sculptural, however some, particularly Aaron McPeak’s sonorous bell steel items Rings (2025) and Icelandic Landscapes (2007-2024), use sound and motion.
Of explicit notice are Collin van Uchelen’s Mission Fireplace Flower, which interprets the artist’s personal firework shows, designed from audio descriptions, into illuminated tactile panels. So too, Jennifer Justice’s Bucket of Rain (2021)—a drizzle of lengths of dog-tag steel chain, hooked up to the rim of a rusty bucket, on the finish of which dangle superbly tactile drop-shaped picket items.
British sculptor David Johnson has contributed two of the present’s new commissions. Nuggets of Embodiment contains 10,000 stone-plaster Digestive biscuits, with phrases like “comma” and “attunement” in Braille showing rather than the much-loved snack’s model title.
Guests to the present will see indicators of blindness—Braille textual content, extra information canines than most galleries welcome—however extra importantly, the exhibition, to Johnson’s thoughts, is “of blindness”. “And it is of being human,” he continues.
“That is crucial factor. If the present can go away that form of message, it is performed its job.”
Past the Visible, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, till 19 April 2026
