From Dawn to Dust

4 April – 22 June 2025

Sculpture Research Library

Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

Free Entry

A woman with blonde hair is looking into a display cabinet, smiling.

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Corridor in a library, while shelves of books to the right, a screen on the left, and a display cabinet at the end.

Display case with three prints. The first reads 'CERES (fifteen burnt images), Keir Smith, August 1980'. The second appears to be the shadow of a hammer; the third is possibly the same hammer, but much more faded.

Display cabinet with two open books showing charcoal drawings.

A display cabinet with a rolled up drawing, stencil of a hammer, open book, and stationary.

A display cabinet with stationary: a pencil, ruler, sharpener, eraser, masking tape, string, matches, and thread.

Display case with an open book, two photos taken in the snow, and a photocopied page.

Mountain valley where a glacier would once have been, with only a small lump of ice remaining.

This display examines items in the Archive of Sculptors’ Papers that reveal how artists have engaged with the ephemeral materiality of time and natural processes.

Fragile ice sculptures contingent on the warmth of the morning sun, snow forms melted by urine, and works incorporating domestic dust and the residue of fire are explored through archival material.

The selection, made by artist Sarah Casey, offers insight into the process of making these works, including tools, photographic documentation of work in progress, sketchbook notes and preparatory work. Each reveals human action mingling with processes that might at first be thought ‘natural’, but on closer inspection these categories become blurred.

Dating from 1980 to the present, the items span a period of growing awareness of the impact of human traces upon the environment and the interrelationship between human and natural forces.

This selection provides only a small glimpse into the ways artists have collaborated with environmental materiality. For a broader view of these themes and a more diverse range of practices, we recommend the following recent publications, available to view in the library:

RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology, London: Barbican, 2024
Groundswell: Women of Land Art, New York: DelMonico Books, 2024
Radical Landscapes: Art, Identity and Activism, London: Tate, 2022

Rebecca Birch and Sarah Casey, Les Vestiges 2024

Les Vestiges is a short film made by Rebecca Birch and Sarah Casey about the precarity of glacial archaeology.

The film follows Casey’s work with archaeologists Pierre-Yves Nicod and Regula Gubler, and was shot in Valais and Bern in 2023. It features the notable archaeological site at the Löetschenpass, where artefacts as old as 3,000 years have melted out of retreating ice. The film uses Casey’s heat-sensitive drawings that react to environmental conditions, to amplify the invisible elements – heat, wind, erosion – that disrupt the ice and archaeology.

Reflecting on the synergies between the fragility of drawing and uncovering archaeological remains, the film explores human entanglements in stories of geological and environmental change in high mountain areas.