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Conference

Blindness and Expanded Sculpture

Leeds Art Gallery, UK

A ring of metal, roughly 30cm in diameter, hanging on a loop of string. A hand is steadying the ring, while a second hand is poised to strike it with a small, square hammer.

Encouraging new inquiry into what kinds of experience artworks make possible.

This conference is concerned with the expanded creative, curatorial, and historiographical opportunities that arise when we refuse to separate out the senses and destabilise the normative, vision-based frame of art reception.

The conference asks: what can blindness bring to sculpture? What does this approach reveal about sculpture’s ontological reality?

This workshop is part of a three-year research project, Beyond the Visual: Blindness and Expanded Sculpture. The project, a collaboration between the Henry Moore Institute, Shape Arts and University of the Arts London, was the recipient of the inaugural Arts and Humanities Research Council Exhibition Fund. The project will culminate with a landmark 2025 exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute, foregrounding work by blind and partially blind artists.

Shape Arts
Chelsea College of Arts, UAL logo
UK Research and Innovation: Arts and Humanities Research Council logo

Call for participation

For this one-day conference we invite new contributions from the philosophy of art, curatorial practice, art history, critical disability studies, psychology and the sciences which engage with inclusive forms of making and beholding sculpture.

Cumulative Entanglement
A small child stands in a dark room with light up trainers and a checked coat, touches a metal pole which forms part of a large room-filling sculpture made of scaffolding poles, featuring lights and wires.
Part of Beyond the Visual
Part of Beyond the Visual

Interactive sculpture

Cumulative Entanglement

Open until 22:00 during Light Night, then during normal opening hours at Leeds Art Gallery

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Leeds Art Gallery, UK
Moulding & Casting: workshop for families and children
Part of Beyond the Visual
Part of Beyond the Visual

Workshop

Moulding & Casting: workshop for families and children

10:30–13:00

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The Studio
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Creating Tactile Objects: Pewter Casting Workshop
Henry Moore making a cast of an object by pressing it into clay and then spooning in liquid plaster.
Part of Beyond the Visual
Part of Beyond the Visual

Workshop

Creating Tactile Objects: Pewter Casting Workshop

11:00–16:00

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The Studio
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Sensory Innovations and Creativity in the Arts
A woman is raising her hand to touch metal sculptures hanging from the ceiling. There are seven of them, each a vertical slice cut from a bell.
Part of Beyond the Visual
Part of Beyond the Visual

Early career research symposium

Sensory Innovations and Creativity in the Arts

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Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Blindness and Expanded Sculpture
A ring of metal, roughly 30cm in diameter, hanging on a loop of string. A hand is steadying the ring, while a second hand is poised to strike it with a small, square hammer.
Part of Beyond the Visual
Part of Beyond the Visual

Conference

Blindness and Expanded Sculpture

Book Now

Leeds Art Gallery, UK
Collaborative Audio Description
Part of Beyond the Visual
Part of Beyond the Visual

Workshop

Collaborative Audio Description

10:00–15:30

Book Now

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Getting here

This conference takes place in the Henry Moore Lecture Theatre, Leeds Art Gallery.

Leeds Art Gallery

The Headrow
Leeds
LS1 3AA

United Kingdom

T:  0113 378 5350
E:  art.gallery@leeds.gov.uk

Accessibility