Becky Beasley’s work is predominantly concerned with the relationships between objects and photography. Its form oscillates between object-based sculpture and its photographic representation. In practice, her work often transforms a sculpture to a photograph, after which another sculpture might be made. Beasley’s work highlights ambiguities in the relationships between images and objects and, later, between artwork and viewer.
Figure (Part 3) (2008) is from a series of works depicting constructed objects which possess a profound ambiguity: they seem to suggest a ‘use’, which is then denied by depicting a type of plank used in construction work, but quite useless as a plank. The work can be linked to Beasley’s time spent in Athens in 2004, when, she says, she ‘became interested in temporary structures which appeared and disappeared daily in a city under rapid reconstruction and modernisation. I began to think of buildings as a potential still life.’
The close ties between Leeds Art Gallery and The Henry Moore Institute, which manages the sculpture collection and archive of Leeds Museums and Galleries, will ensure that this work benefits from the world-class displays organised by these two institutions and the scholarship fostered by the Institute.