LEEDS.- A new sculpture by Rebecca Warren RA, co-commissioned by the Henry Moore Institute and 14-18 NOW, has been unveiled. The work coincides with the opening of a major exhibition exploring artists’ continued fascination with prosthetics, and the extension and augmentation of the human figure.

Rebecca Warren’s striking bronze sculpture Man and the dark is located directly outside the Henry Moore Institute on one of the busiest thoroughfares in Leeds as part of the Institute’s summer exhibition The Body Extended: Sculpture and Prosthetics (21 July – 23 October 2016). Rebecca Warren has described her sculpture as “weighty, raw bronze, mainly legs made of extreme convexities of muscle”.

Presenting over seventy artworks, objects and images spanning the late nineteenth century to the present day, The Body Extended: Sculpture and Prosthetics features some of the most important artists who experimented with sculpture and addressed radical changes to the human form during this period.

Highlights in the exhibition include work by Martin Boyce, Jacob Epstein, Henrich Hoerle and Charles and Ray Eames. Alongside examples of prostheses from the collections of the Freud Museum, Hunterian Museum, Imperial War Museum and Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds are sculptures by Matthew Barney, Yael Bartana, Louise Bourgeois and Rebecca Horn.

Jenny Waldman, Director of 14-18 NOW, said: “We are delighted to present this remarkable sculpture by Rebecca Warren. Man and the dark is an incredibly striking piece of public art which will give occasion to reflect on the devastating impact of the First World War. It is wonderful to have worked with the Henry Moore Institute on this landmark exhibition.”

The First World War drove the technological advancement of prosthetics. This was the first mass global war of the industrialised age and bodies were fragmented in ways that had not been known before. This industrial war, with human losses on a massive scale, brought the mutilated body into public life. As shattered soldiers returned home, artists and the medical profession responded in ways that continue to resonate through culture. Every prosthetic is unique, made for what is needed and most effective for the hosting body. Clinical prosthetists use the same techniques as a figurative sculptor - their workshops are splattered with plaster, moulds are taken, casts created and colours and textures matched to skin.

A dedicated outreach programme related to Rebecca Warren’s new sculpture engages with communities in Leeds and Wakefield led by Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle and supported by Leeds City Council and Wakefield Council.

Rebecca Warren was born in London in 1965. She studied at Goldsmiths College, the University of London, and Chelsea College of Art, London. Her solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Zürich (2004), Serpentine Gallery, London (2009), The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago and The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA (2019), Museum Dhondt – Dhaenens, Belgium (2012), Kunstverein Munich (2013) and Dallas Museum of Art (2016), where she is presenting a commissioned outdoor sculpture. In 2014 Warren was appointed as Professor of Arts at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and in 2013 became a Royal Academician. From 1993 to 1994, Warren was an artist-in-residence at The Ruskin School at the University of Oxford. Warren was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2006 and the Vincent Award in 2008.