Yorkshire Sculpture International

For Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019, the Henry Moore Institute presented the work of Tamar Harpaz, Rashid Johnson, Maria Loboda, Sean Lynch and Cauleen Smith in an exhibition that brought together anthropological debates.

New commissions by artists including Rashid Johnson (b. 1977, Chicago) and Tamar Harpaz (b.1979, Jerusalem)  brought together an assimilation of debates around the use of material culture in understanding human behaviour, history and what it means to create objects today.

Johnson’s work embraces a broad range of media to examine issues of roots, race and identity, especially in black America. Harpaz manipulates perception using optical devices and cinematic mechanisms. Bringing ageing technologies to the point of malfunction, she uses their failure as a driving force in her work to examine systems, borders and beliefs.

For Yorkshire Sculpture International Maria Loboda created a number of lamps, inspired by a 1920s French design, each encasing select insects. Cauleen Smith screened the film work Sojourner 2018, presented as a new installation, in which she re-imagined the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum in Joshua Tree, California, as a radical feminist utopia

Sean Lynch (b. 1978, Kerry, Ireland) realised a project for the Henry Moore Institute Research Library based on the life and work of ‘Flint Jack’, a nineteenth-century Yorkshire antiquarian, vagabond and highly skilled artisan, who sold fake megalithic axe heads and ceramic and stone carving forgeries. Despite their lack of historical providence and verification, these objects still populate many UK museums.

Find out more about the exhibition by listening to our audio guide