Curated Selection: Sculpture

For this week's Curated Selection we've selected artists who have explored sculpture as part of their practice. Featuring: Jessica Wetherly, Liz Clifford, Vincent James, Susan Eyre and Joanna Mowbray

When The Moon Howls, 2023

Jessica Wetherly

When The Moon Howls

When the Moon Howls explores the (dis)enchantment with the forest after centuries of domestication and fragmentation. In search of wilderness she composes a new ritual narrative to investigate endurance, fear and isolation, reflecting on her experience of walking at night. The sculptural installation across three rooms becomes a haunted house where myth, fairytale and folklore are entangled. The show is a dreamscape. The artist inhabits a wolf's clothing to reconnect with the wild as an antidote to, and escape from, the monotony of ecocide. This metamorphosis channels radical new ways of thinking and connecting to the non-human.

Symbio-Being, 2022

Liz Clifford

The work is a free-standing sculpture on 3 legs. It has a slight wobble but is stable. It hints at evolving hybrid forms and references the human form through scale and the domestic provenance of some of the materials. All the materials are salvaged, the wire and metal objects having been found in the rural landscape. The contrasts of soft and hard are intended to be uncomfortable, referencing human treatment of nature as well as the toll borne by the human body over time.

136 x 80 x 70

Cut up Rough, 2022

Vincent James

Fabric, toy stuffing, wood and vinyl

40 x 65 x 57 cm

Domain of the Devil Valley Master, 2023

Susan Eyre

This work uses industrial directional magnetic steel, sanded and etched to reveal the Goss texture of rolled iron silicon alloy crystals. The jigsaw pattern of magnetic domains give this material exceptional magnetic properties. The simple evocation of a spiral described in geologically informed polygons draws upon many references, from the shape of our own Milky Way Galaxy sculpted by vast cosmological magnetic fields and the spiralling molten dynamo generating Earth’s magnetic field, to the inner pathway of spiritual growth and the route to the symbolic omphalos (navel) at the centre of the world where the sky entrance and the underworld meet. The title of this work originates from an ancient Chinese manual on the skills of persuasion, The Book of the Devil Valley Master, containing the first known mention of a compass, known at the time as a south-pointer.

250 x 250 cm

Beyond and Within, 1993 - 1995

Joanna Mowbray

‘Beyond and Within’ was fabricated from sheets of hot rolled steel which I welded and constructed in my studio/workshop. Each panel was laser cut, after a long consuming period of time scanning each paper pattern used to create the 1:10 scale model. This work was kindly supported by B.Allsop Ltd. Precision metal working company. In 1992 I was a recipient of a Henry Moore Bursary in association with the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. this bursary enabled me to produce this sculpture and a group of smaller forms ‘Inside Out’ for a one person exhibition at the YSP in 1995-96. ‘Beyond and Within’ remained on exhibition in the park for another 9 years, until it was purchased by The University of York.

375 x 540 x 375 cm