Beyond the Visual
Sculpture Galleries, Henry Moore Institute
28 November 2025 – 8 March 2026
Free entry
Press release (audio version)
Press release (text and images)
Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, in collaboration with University of the Arts London and Shape Arts, presents Beyond the Visual, an exhibition of contemporary sculpture designed to be experienced using multiple senses. The exhibition marks the culmination of a pioneering three-year research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
- Beyond the Visual is the UK’s first major sculpture exhibition where blind and partially blind practitioners are central to the curatorial process and make up the majority of exhibitors.
- The exhibition will include seven new commissions, plus historical and contemporary work, by sixteen international artists.
- The exhibition is the culmination of a ground-breaking research project led in partnership with University of the Arts London, Henry Moore Institute and Shape Arts.
- Dedicated to challenging the dominance of sight in the making and appreciation of art, the project is transforming how museums and galleries engage blind and partially blind visitors.
Artists in the exhibition
Beyond the Visual brings together work by both blind and sighted artists and is co-curated by Professor Ken Wilder, artist and Professor of Aesthetics at University of the Arts London (UAL) and artist Dr Aaron McPeake, Associate Lecturer at Chelsea College of Arts (part of UAL), who is registered blind. They are joined by Dr Clare O’Dowd, Research Curator at Henry Moore Institute, who plays a central curatorial role in the project. Developed in collaboration with Shape Arts, the exhibition builds on their research and reflects a shared commitment to exploring alternative modes of experiencing sculpture.
The exhibition will include new commissions and features historical and contemporary works by Lucia Beijlsmit, Lenka Clayton, Fayen d’Evie, Barry Flanagan, Hillary Goidell, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, David Johnson, Jennifer Justice, Georgina Kleege, Aaron McPeake, Sam Metz, Serafina Min, Henry Moore, Bryan Phillips, Collin van Uchelen and Ken Wilder.
Works on display in the UK for the first time include a new iteration of Emilie Louise Gossiaux’s Doggirl 2025, an anthropomorphised ceramic sculpture based on the artist’s guide dog and animal companion. Jennifer Justice’s highly tactile hanging installation Bucket of Rain 2017 comprises cherry, pecan, walnut, maple and elm ‘raindrops’ suspended from a ghostly iron bucket rim. Artist and pyrotechnician Collin van Uchelen’s Project Fire Flower 2021 features a series of illuminated tactile panels that translate the patterns of light in fireworks into non-visual forms using engraved pathways and integrated audio descriptions.
Lenka Clayton’s collaborative installation Sculpture for the Blind, by the Blind 2017 plays on the inherent irony of Constantin Brâncuși’s Sculpture for the Blind 1920, a work now presented in a glass case that can no longer be touched. Clayton invited blind and partially blind people in Philadelphia, USA to listen to her audio description of Brâncuși’s work and make their own versions of Sculpture for the Blind.
Partially blind writer Joseph Rizzo Naudi is collaborating with the artists and curators to ensure every work in the exhibition will be audio described and forms a crucial part of the exhibition experience. In addition, London-based Korean artist Serafina Min obscures her sculptural work in an opaque acrylic vitrine so it can only be accessed by audio description.
The inclusion of work associated with Tate’s landmark 1981 exhibition Sculpture for the Blind will add a historical dimension to the exhibition. Aimed at widening inclusivity for blind audiences, the exhibition featured tactile works including Barry Flanagan’s Elephant 1981. Henry Moore was a powerful advocate of tactile experiences in sculpture and supported a number of other early ‘touch’ exhibitions. Beyond the Visual will offer a rare chance to touch Henry Moore’s Mother and Child: Arch 1959.
New commissions
Seven new works have been commissioned for the exhibition. These include a new video and audio-descriptive work by Fayen d’Evie, Hillary Goidell and Georgina Kleege, in collaboration with sound artist Bryan Phillips. Together they are creating an immersive installation Wayfinding ‘Sequence’/Vibrational Re-Call 2025, which centres on renowned blind writer and theorist Georgina Kleege – author of More Than Meets the Eye – as she interacts with Richard Serra’s monumental steel sculpture Sequence 2006.
David Johnson will present two works: Inhibition: Beyond the doubt of a shadow 2025 is an installation of over-sized Braille texts made from silicone ‘chewing gum’ attached to the underside of a café table, highlighting the artist’s tactile interactions with the world. Johnson’s multiple casts of digestive biscuits incorporate Braille messages in a playful work, Nuggets of embodiment 2024/25.
Aaron McPeake’s Rings 2025, is a bell sound sculpture installation in bronze that will offer a multisensory encounter through listening, touch and smell; and Ken Wilder’s Pendulum 2025 will invite audience interaction through a suspended plywood structure that explores the kinetic and sonic possibilities of sculpture.
“The exhibition at Henry Moore Institute is exemplary of a new multisensory approach where access is integral to the creative and curatorial process. This integrated approach will influence institutional policy about how we all interact with sculpture.”
Professor Ken Wilder, Principal Investigator for Beyond the Visual
“Most exhibitions routinely exclude blind or partially blind people with instructions to not touch the artwork. Beyond the Visual, by contrast, celebrates the work of blind artists and non-blind artists who make multisensory work. There is a history of such exhibitions – but they were often curated by sighted people, whereas now blind artists and curators are at the forefront, moving the agenda forward.”
Dr Aaron McPeake, Co-Investigator for Beyond the Visual and co-curator of the exhibition
“Beyond the Visual transforms how we think about sculpture. It invites all of us to engage through touch, sound and movement. This remarkable exhibition reshapes our understanding of access, not as an afterthought, but as a starting point for creativity, marking a turning point for the Institute as we commit to embedding these principles in everything we do.”
Laurence Sillars, Head of Henry Moore Institute
Publication and events
This exhibition coincides with the launch of a fully accessible book Beyond the Visual: Multisensory Modes of Beholding Art, edited by Ken Wilder and Aaron McPeake and published by UCL Press, available in print or as an open access free download online. As well as chapters by all three curators, the book features contributions from the multidisciplinary network generated through the research, including exhibiting artists Fayen d’Evie, Georgina Kleege, David Johnson and Collin van Uchelen.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of events, building on the Beyond the Visual Research Season which took place across West Yorkshire in 2024/25.
For media inquiries and more information, please contact:
Kara Chatten, Marketing & Communications Manager
Henry Moore Institute
kara.chatten@henry-moore.org
Emily Dodgson, Head of Marketing & Enterprise
Henry Moore Foundation
emily.dodgson@henry-moore.org
Kitty Malton
Sam Talbot
kitty@sam-talbot.com
Matthew Brown
Sam Talbot
matthew@sam-talbot.com
Alexandra Cuncev
University of the Arts London
a.cuncev@arts.ac.uk
Euan McLaren
University of the Arts London
e.mclaren@arts.ac.uk
Elinor Hayes
Shape Arts
elinor@shapearts.org.uk
Instagram: Henry Moore Institute
Facebook: Henry Moore Institute
YouTube: henrymoore
Notes to editors
About the project
This exhibition marks the culmination of a ground-breaking three-year collaborative research project Beyond the Visual: Blindness and Expanded Sculpture led by Professor Ken Wilder (Professor of Aesthetics, University of the Arts London), Dr Aaron McPeake (artist and Associate Lecturer at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London) and Dr Clare O’Dowd (Research Curator at Henry Moore Institute), together with Shape Arts, the UK’s leading disability-led arts organisation. The project is the recipient of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) inaugural Exhibition Fund, a major grant supporting innovative exhibition approaches.
Research undertaken includes extensive consultation with blind and partially blind communities, specifically to inform the curation of the exhibition. This research revealed that access provision in museums is too often treated as an add-on, rather than integrated into the creative process. The curatorial approach for this exhibition has been to embed it all the way through. Evidence shows that if an exhibition includes work that can be engaged with through multiple senses, not just vision, then it enhances the appreciation for all audiences – something often referred to as ‘blindness gain’.
Alongside the consultations, a series of public events formed the Beyond the Visual Research Season which ran from October 2024 to April 2025 and included an international conference; an early career symposium; casting workshops; a creative audio description workshop at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and an interactive sound and light sculpture by Rian Treanor, Cumulative Entanglement, created after workshops with blind or partially blind users of Rotherham Sight and Sound, commissioned for Leeds Light Night 2024 and hosted at Leeds Art Gallery.
About the curators
Dr Clare O’Dowd
Dr Clare O’Dowd is Research Curator at Henry Moore Institute, where she leads the Institute’s sculpture research programme of events, fellowships and exhibitions. She received her PhD from the University of Manchester in 2013, where she was Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Art History prior to joining the Institute in 2019.
Her research and curatorial interests focus on the histories of sculpture, particularly sculpture’s relationship to the experience of modernity and the ways in which artistic practices relate to broader issues of social change.
Dr Aaron McPeake
In 2002, McPeake had to abandon a long career in stage lighting design due to the loss of most of his eyesight and returned to arts education and practice on a full-time basis. He has exhibited extensively internationally, including a number of prestigious group exhibitions engaging themes from critical disability studies.
His PhD thesis, at Chelsea College of Arts, UAL Nibbling at Clouds – The Visual Artist Encounters Adventitious Blindness, is a holistic study of the impacts vision loss has on the visual artist. The thesis draws on the experiences of a panel of artists (who lost eyesight in later life) and includes his own experience as well as how he has developed his own practice.
Professor Ken Wilder
Professor Ken Wilder is an academic, artist and writer. He is Professor of Aesthetics at University of the Arts London.
Wilder makes site-responsive sculptural installations and architectural interventions. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. He was artist-in-residence for Coram, the leading children’s charity; in 2016, he installed Skylights, a site-specific installation within the London Foundling mortuary, Bloomsbury. Wilder has been principal investigator on two AHRC funded projects investigating blindness arts.
Wilder has written extensively on the aesthetics of reception. His monograph Beholding: Situated Art and the Aesthetics of Reception was published in 2020 by Bloomsbury. As well as contributing chapters to edited volumes, he has had articles published in the British Journal of Aesthetics, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Aesthetics Investigations, Moving Image Review & Art Journal, Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics, Architecture and Culture, Theatre and Performance Design, Image [&] Narrative.
About the artists
Lucia Beijlsmit
Lucia Beijlsmit (b.1949) was born in Amsterdam, she has lived in El Salvador and Angola and is now based in Spain, where she began working as a sculptor and regularly exhibits. Her speciality is carving stone. She has worked closely with blind audiences through exploratory workshops, and actively encourages her work to be experienced through touch.
Lenka Clayton
Lenka Clayton (b.1977) was born in Derbyshire and grew up in Cornwall, UK and is a British-American artist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her interdisciplinary work contemplates, exaggerates and defamiliarises accepted rules and practices of everyday life, extending the ordinary to the poetic and absurd. She has exhibited her art internationally. Clayton’s work is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco.
Fayen Ke-Xiao d’Evie
Fayen Ke-Xiao d’Evie (b.1974) is an artist, writer, publisher and lecturer in Communication Design at RMIT University in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, who identifies as blindish. She is a co-founder of the Access Lab and Library, which approaches access as a platform for generosity and as a field for experimental creative practice. Her creative research is grounded in blindness, often inviting audiences into intersensory readings of artworks and texts.
Barry Flanagan
Barry Flanagan (1941–2009), born in Prestatyn, North Wales, described himself as an itinerant European sculptor, working between London, New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, and Ibiza. One of Britain’s most significant sculptors, his work was seen as radical and independent from the start. He began studying architecture at Birmingham College of Art and Crafts before switching to Art and Design. After completing several short courses and working in various jobs, he enrolled in the Sculpture Diploma at St. Martin’s School of Art in 1964, later teaching there and at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Flanagan represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1982 and was awarded an OBE and elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1991. Flanagan died from Motor Neurone Disease in Ibiza, Spain, in 2009, aged 68. His work continues to be exhibited internationally and is held in many prestigious collections.
Emilie Louise Gossiaux
Emilie Louise Gossiaux (b.1989) is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City, born in New Orleans. Gossiaux earned a BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2014, and an MFA from Yale School of Art in 2019. As a visual artist who is also blind, Emilie brings their inner worlds into the physical realm through drawings, ceramics, and sculptural installations. Creating works based on dreams, memories, and their sense of touch, Gossiaux explores themes relating to interdependence, disability and interspecies kinship that centres on the decade long relationship with their guide dog and animal companion, London.
David Johnson
David Johnson (b.1956) is a UK based blind artist. He says he is “unashamedly a blind artist rather than an artist who is blind”. In his art practice he uses a wide range of materials and processes including concrete, plaster, found objects and sonics. He produces a wide range of cast objects, 3D printed objects, assemblages and installations, all of which provoke, challenge and upset audience expectations. His art mission is not to overcome the barriers that blindness undoubtedly puts in the way in our visually biased world, but rather to show that blindness has a positive side that art practice is uniquely placed to demonstrate. Beauty remains a core element in a blind person’s life.
Jennifer Justice
Jennifer Justice (b.1977) is a legally blind artist and writer originally from Alabama. She holds an MFA from the University of Illinois, Chicago and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and currently lives and works in Willits, California. Her work has shown at the Palo Alto Art Center, CripTech Incubator, StoreFrontLab in San Francisco, and the Chicago Cultural Center. Her work and research centres disabled community encounters with natural and technological landscapes.
Aaron McPeake
Aaron McPeake (b.1965) is a sculptor and filmmaker with sound at the centre of his practice. He is registered blind, and his sculptural works are designed to be physically interacted with, creating multisensory engagements. He has exhibited widely internationally and completed many public sculpture commissions. He teaches at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London, and is Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project Beyond the Visual: Blindness and expanded sculpture.
Sam Metz
Sam Metz is an artist and curator based in the north of England with low vision. They studied Architecture and Critical Theory at University of Nottingham, having previously trained in physical theatre. Metz is influenced by disability-led approaches to interpretation, particularly focusing on sensory modalities of understanding. As a neurodivergent artist and curator with sensory processing differences, Metz creates work in non-verbal ways that begin and end in movement and embodied interactions without recourse to traditionally privileged verbal and written forms of communication.
Serafina Min
Serafina Min (b.1994) is a South Korean artist and educator based in the UK. Her multidisciplinary practice—painting, sculpture, performance, and film—weaves together narratives drawn from linguistic, historical, and traditional research. A graduate of Chelsea College of Arts, Min’s recent work explores pedagogy as an artistic medium, investigating how education itself can be a form of creative expression. She teaches art to blind students, integrating accessibility and sensory engagement into her practice. Her work has been exhibited internationally.
Henry Moore
Henry Moore (1898–1986) was one of the most important British artists of the twentieth century and arguably the most internationally celebrated sculptor of the period. He is renowned for his semi-abstract monumental bronzes, which can be seen all over the world. Moore was a champion of the role of touch in appreciating sculpture.
Collin van Uchelen
Collin van Uchelen, PhD, is a community psychologist, conceptual artist, and pyrotechnician based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His artistic practice explores techniques for translating the light of pyrotechnic art into non-visual forms using tactile representations and audio description. Currently, he is designing a multi-sensory pyro-musical display which uses fireworks to depict his own experience of sight loss from a progressive blinding eye disease.
Ken Wilder
Ken Wilder (b.1956) is University of the Arts London Professor of Aesthetics. He is an artist, writer and academic, and Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project Beyond the Visual: Blindness and expanded sculpture. He is the author of Beholding: Situated art and the aesthetics of reception (Bloomsbury, 2020), and has written multiple journal articles and book chapters, primarily in aesthetics and the philosophy of art.
About the participating organisations
Henry Moore Institute
Henry Moore Institute welcomes everyone to visit their galleries, research library and archive of sculptors’ papers to experience, enjoy and research sculpture from around the world. The newly refurbished Institute can be found in the centre of Leeds, the city where Henry Moore (1898–1986) began his training as a sculptor. Their changing programme of historical, modern and contemporary exhibitions and events encourage thinking about what sculpture is, how it is made and the artists who make it.
As part of the Henry Moore Foundation, they are a hub for sculpture, connecting a global network of artists and scholars, continuing research into the art form and ensuring that sculpture is accessible and celebrated by a wide audience.
The long-established partnership of Leeds City Council and the Henry Moore Foundation began with the development of the Sculpture Study Centre in Leeds Art Gallery in 1982 and led to the development of the Henry Moore Institute in 1993. It now represents an unparalleled collaboration in the collection, study and presentation of sculpture. The Leeds Sculpture Collections lies at the heart of their work together, underpinned by the complimentary research and curatorial expertise of both organisations.
Free entry
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00–17:00
Henry Moore Foundation
The Henry Moore Foundation was founded by the artist and his family in 1977 to encourage public appreciation of the visual arts.
Today we support innovative sculpture projects, devise an imaginative programme of exhibitions and research worldwide, and preserve the legacy of Moore himself: one of the great sculptors of the 20th century, who did so much to bring the art form to a wider audience.
We run two venues, in Leeds and Hertfordshire, showing a mix of Moore’s own work and other sculpture.
We also fund a variety of sculpture projects through our Henry Moore Grants and Research programmes and we have a world-class collection of artworks which regularly tour both nationally and internationally.
A registered charity, we award grants to arts organisations around the world, with a mission to bring great sculpture to as many people as possible.
Chelsea College of Arts
Chelsea College of Arts, UAL, is a leading art and design College based in a historical building alongside the River Thames and Tate Britain in Central London.
They offer students and researchers a creative and dynamic environment where they’re encouraged to push boundaries, explore their interests and develop their creative voice. Chelsea offers degrees in a variety of subjects within fine art and design. The supportive community of creatives, together with excellent facilities and studios, enable innovative work and imaginative collaborations between the students.
Their College holds a range of networks that broaden perspectives and knowledge and offer opportunities for real-life work experience. The international nature of Chelsea is reflected in their student and staff body and also in partnerships and exchange opportunities. Students are encouraged to engage with different contemporary fine art and design practices, and the College’s location in the heart of London provides exceptional opportunities to explore galleries, museums and cultural events. Chelsea College of Arts is also a space for world-class research and knowledge exchange, encouraging holistic thinking across research areas, and addressing global challenges. The cutting-edge research expertise is intrinsically embedded in the courses they offer.
University of the Arts London (UAL)
UAL offers an extensive range of courses in art, design, fashion, communication and performing arts. Their graduates go on to work in and shape the creative industries worldwide. UAL is ranked second in the world for Art and Design in the 2025 QS World University Rankings by Subject ®.
The University has a world-class reputation and is made up of six equally renowned Colleges and five institutes:
Camberwell College of Arts
Central Saint Martins
Chelsea College of Arts
London College of Communication
London College of Fashion
Wimbledon College of Art
AKO Storytelling Institute
UAL Creative Computing Institute
UAL Decolonising Arts Institute
UAL Fashion, Textiles and Technology Institute
UAL School of Pre-degree Studies
Shape Arts
Shape Arts is a disability-led organisation breaking barriers to creative excellence. We deliver a range of projects supporting marginalised artists, as well as training cultural venues to be more inclusive and accessible for disabled people as employees, artists and audiences. All of Shape’s work is informed by the Social Model of Disability.
Running alongside this portfolio is the NLHF funded National Disability Movement Archive and Collection (NDMAC), a radical collecting and retelling of the Disability Rights Movement’s heritage story that builds on our delivery of the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA), a £1-million digital archive chronicling the history of disability arts in the UK.
