Visual Arts

Taking as its point of departure, Liadin Cooke's representation of the 'Red Room' in which Jane Eyre was locked up overnight by her unfeeling aunt, 'Prospects and Interiors' looks at drawings by contemporary sculptors of interior space, both physical and mental.

The selection ranges from perspective drawings of imagined architectural interiors, laid out as virtual stage sets with a series of suggestive props; through highly worked, close-up studies, in which floors, walls and furnishings are turned into abstract patterns; to more expressive abstractions which describe the interior spaces of the mind, those places onto which we project our hopes and fears.

Tony Cragg:from the 'Living Room' series

Running throughout the show is the sculptor's concern to find a way of representing space as matter. It explores the peculiar ability of the drawn line or mark to make evident usually invisible currents and forces - such as heat, sound and emotion - and to dissolve material differences between various objects and between objects and space.

It suggests that, through drawing, sculptors can express space in new ways - in terms of light and shade, emotional and physical forces and particles of matter - and make 'nothingness' into something that is 'full' and charged with energy.

The exhibition is based around a core of works in the Leeds collection, including several new acquisitions, with the addition of a number of loans. It includes work by Ed Allington, Phyllida Barlow, Anna Barriball, Nathan Coley, Liadin Cooke, Tony Cragg, Peter J. Evans, Magdalena Jetelova, Minjung Kim, Rosie Leventon, John Newling, Rick Oginz, Carl Plackman, Martin Westwood, Rachel Whiteread, Stephen Willats and Bill Woodrow.

'Prospects and Interiors: Sculptors' drawings of inner space' runs at the Mezzanine Gallery, Henry Moore Institute, 74 The Headrow from Sunday 1 June to Sunday 24 August 2008