Conference
Touch-Space: The Tactile Imagination in Contemporary Sculpture
10:30–19:00
University of Leeds, Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery
This event has passed
Presenting research into the ways in which contemporary artists are interpreting and reimagining tactility.
This conference is the last in a collaborative season of research events programmed by the Henry Moore Institute in partnership with the University of Leeds. The impetus for the research season is the launch of the University of Leeds’ digital exhibition on Herbert Read (1893-1968) and enhancements to its Herbert Read archive.
This one-day conference seeks to examine the continued currency of Read’s assertion that the most important qualities of a sculpture are those which are tactile: its surface, its weight, mass and volume. Read’s contention is not that we need all literally touch a sculpture, but that our ability to imagine these qualities and be moved by them is one of sculpture’s key fascinations.
The twentieth century saw a rich and wide variety of sculpture produced which chimes imaginatively with Read’s words. Examples can be found throughout Fauvism, Vorticism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism, and including work more difficult to categorise such as Kurt Schwitters’ (1887-1948) remarkable small-scale plaster sculptures made in the 1930s and 40s. This continued into the latter half of the century with Claes Oldenburg’s (1929-2022) ‘soft sculptures’, Mike Kelly’s (1954-2012) blankets and stuffed toys, and the felt and fabric work produced by Louise Bourgeois well into the twenty-first century. More recently, as demonstrated in the Henry Moore Institute’s exhibition programme, such concerns can be seen in the work of artists including Michael Dean (b. 1977), Paul Neagu (1938-2004), Rasheed Johnson (b. 1944), Senga Nengudi (b. 1943), Alena Matĕjka (b. 1966) and Lungiswa Gqunta (b. 1990).
Tickets
This event is now fully booked. You can join the waiting list on Eventbrite in case tickets become available.
Programme
9:30 Registration and coffee
10:00 Welcome and introduction
10:30 Panel: The Haptic and the Domestic
Chair: Charlotte Cullen, York St John University
‘Touching Untouchables’
Linda Aloysius (Central Saint Martins and Sphinx International)
‘Rethinking Tactility, Domesticity, Labour and the Female Body’
Lana Locke (University of the Arts, London)
‘Sculpture and the Unheimliche: Brandon Ndife’
Sydney Smith (Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford)
‘A Sculptor’s Perspective: Owning the ‘Touch-Space’; Modelling the Phenomenon from Inside the Practice’
Sheila Gaffney (Leeds Arts University)
12:30 Lunch (provided)
13:30 Panel: Touch and Opticality
Chair: Alison Eardley, University of Westminster
‘Proprioception and Herbert Read’s ‘Touch-Space”
Ken Wilder (Chelsea and Camberwell Colleges of Art, University of the Arts London)
‘Navigating Sculptural Stories of Touch’
Helen Barff (artist)
‘Can intangible touch become tangible in the art museum? Prosthetic encounters through pedagogical art objects’
Kimberley Foster (Goldsmiths, University of London)
‘What Actually Takes Place’
Martin Elphick (Cotswold Sculptors Association)
15:30 Tea/Coffee break
16:00 Panel: Surface and Materiality
Chair: Kirstie Gregory, Henry Moore Institute
‘Survivor Steel’
Samuel Holleran (University of Melbourne)
‘The Thickness of Surface’
Laurence Kavanagh (artist)
‘Points of Contact: Phyllida Barlow’s Shedmesh (1976) and an Expanded Exploration of Touch’
Natalie Rudd (University of Birmingham)
‘Haptic Sensibilities: a Critical Revision of Touch through Everyday Fabric’
Mia Mai Symonds (practice-led researcher)
18:00 Keynote Lecture: Michael Paraskos (Imperial College London)
19:00 Wine Reception
Paper abstracts & speaker biographies
Touching Untouchables
Linda Aloysius (Central Saint Martins and Sphinx International)
Rethinking Tactility, Domesticity, Labour and the Female Body
Lana Locke (University of the Arts, London)
Sculpture and the Unheimliche: Brandon Ndife
Sydney Smith (Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford)
A Sculptor’s Perspective: Owning the ‘Touch-Space’; Modelling the Phenomenon from Inside the Practice
Sheila Gaffney (Leeds Arts University)
Proprioception and Herbert Read's 'Touch-Space'
Ken Wilder (Chelsea and Camberwell Colleges of Art, University of the Arts London)
Can Intangible Touch Become Tangible in the Art Museum? Prosthetic Encounters through Pedagogical Art Objects
Kimberley Foster (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Points of Contact: Phyllida Barlow’s Shedmesh (1976) and an Expanded Exploration of Touch
Natalie Rudd (University of Birmingham)
Haptic Sensibilities: a Critical Revision of Touch through Everyday Fabric
Mia Mai Symonds (practice-led researcher)
Herbert Read: We are living in a material world
Dr Michael Paraskos
This event is part of our current season of research looking at renowned novelist, publisher, editor and art critic Herbert Read.
Reassessing Herbert Read
Winter 2022 & Spring 2023
This research season aims to give scholars, both emerging and established, a chance to reassess Read’s work from a contemporary perspective. It also seeks to revisit his achievements and increase the public’s direct and virtual access to his archive.
This Research Season has been organised in collaboration with Leeds University Library Special Collections and Galleries.
Getting here
This event will take place in the Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery, in the Parkinson Building at the University of Leeds.
Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery, University of Leeds
Parkinson Building
Woodhouse Lane
University of Leeds
Leeds
LS2 9JT
United Kingdom
T: 0113 343 5663
E: gallery@library.leeds.ac.uk