Public art on campus

William Chattaway - Walking Figure

In our catalogue: Walking Figure

Chattaway was born in Coventry in 1927. He attended Coventry School of Art from 1943-5 and the Slade from 1945-8, before settling permanently in Paris in 1950. The original Walking Figure was created in 1968 and is much influenced by Alberto Giacometti's walking figures of the 1950s and 60s. Chattaway explores the armless female form, considering spatial relationships and the concept of movement within a single, life-size work. The original piece was conceived as part of a Triple Group (1968) with a seated figure and one lying horizontally.

Stanley Burton had enjoyed a close friendship with Chattaway and had been elected to serve on the University of Leeds Council in 1952 and was subsequently appointed Chairman of Bodington Hall, the University's new student hall of residence completed in 1963.

Stanley commissioned a replica of the version of the standing figure from the original triple group, which was installed outside on the grounds of Bodington Hall. In the 1980s, however, Walking Figure was severely damaged by students and one leg was destroyed beyond repair. Ever supportive of the University, Stanley intervened again and organised with Chattaway to recast the sculpture. This later cast is now displayed for security reasons within Parkinson Court, where it is seen by thousands of students, staff and visitors each year. Bodington Hall closed in 2013 and the damaged original sculpture was displayed in the garden of the Burton family home, Fulwith Brow.

Simon Fujiwara - A Spire

In our catalogue:

The British-Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara was born in London in 1982 and grew up in Cornwall. He studied Architecture at the University of Cambridge from 2002-05 and Fine Art at the Stadelschule Hochschule fur Bilderde Kunst in Frankfurt am Main from 2006-8. He is now based in Berlin. His first major British exhibition was at Tate St Ives in 2012. Fujiwara adopts a quasi-anthropological approach in his practice and this work was his first Public Art commission. The commissioning committee, which included student and staff representation, sought to create a new outstanding feature at the very entrance of the University, in front of the new Laidlaw Library. Fujiwara's work, A Spire, is a beacon and totem that evokes the industries on which the University, and indeed, the city, are largely built. A Spire is conceived as a soaring visual timeline - a skyward archaeology that connects the past and the present. Tall and cylindrical in form, A Spire is a third spire between two church buildings on the Woodhouse Lane site, drawing attention to the physical qualities of the site and creating a visually arresting moment on the campus. From the pulverised coal integrated at the base of the spire symbolising the coal on which Leeds's prosperity was built to the branches and cables laid into the cast to create a surface of intertwined natural and technological elements which symbolises the current digital era in which organic and man-made materials merge. A Spire creates a unique new presence at the top of Woodhouse Lane, capturing an ever changing vertical landscape and capturing the passing of time.

Keith Wilson - Sign for Art (Stelae 2014)

In our catalogue: Sign for Art (Stelae 2014)

Born in Birmingham in 1965, Wilson studied at Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, from 1985-88. He took his MA at the Slade, before teaching at the Royal College of Art, and he soon established a reputation as a sculptor with significant solo exhibitions at Camden Arts Centre, Compton Verney and the Wellcome Collection. He is currently Professor of Sculpture at Sheffield Hallam University. Wilson's best-known public artwork is Steles (Waterworks), an installation for the Olympic Park (2012). His practice involves 'on-going enquiry into the contingency of meaning specifically in relation to the public functioning of sculpture'. Sign for Art (Stelae 2014) references Wilson's early years working as an art instructor for deaf-blind adults in the 1980s. 'Drawing two spaced fingertips in a wave motion across the forehead of the student - a tactile brainwave sign - announced the arrival of the artist, the subject of art and the imminent activity of making art,' he remembered. 'This modification of the British Sign Language, presumably derived from the making of a brushstroke, struck home and stayed with me,' he explained. Standing in the centre of the newly refurbished Beech Grove Plaza, the artwork has been affectionately christened by students as 'the squiggle'.

Eric Gill - Christ driving the Moneychangers from ...

In our catalogue: Christ driving the Moneychangers from the Temple

The University campus is home to an extensive range of public art. Our works of public art have played a key role on campus ever since the controversial First World War memorial by Eric Gill was dedicated in 1923.

Public art enhances the experience of students, staff, local communities and visitors, and reflects the academic research themes and learning activities of University life.

Highlights of public art on campus include:

• Keith Wilson’s ‘Sign for Art (Stelae, 2014)’
• Eric Gill’s ‘Christ driving the Moneychangers from the Temple’
• Lorna Green’s ‘Meet, Sit, and Talk’;  ‘Conversation’; and ‘Roof Garden’
• Quentin Bell’s ‘Levitating Figure’, known as “The Dreamer”
• William Chattaway’s ‘Hermes/The Spirit of Enterprise’ and ‘Walking Figure’
• Mitzi Cunliffe’s ‘Man-Made Fibres’
• Austin Wright’s ‘Limbo’

To find out more about these pieces and more, go to our public art online exhibition.

If you would like to explore on campus, download our Public Art trail which tells the stories of individual works, their creators and patrons, and provides their locations.

The University of Leeds has implemented a Public Art Strategy with a vision for an inspirational, integrated and connected Public Art programme. Its public sculptures are administered through The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery.

Quentin Bell - Levitating Woman, known as 'Th...

In our catalogue: Levitating Woman 'The Dreamer'

Quentin Bell (1910-1996) was the son of Vanessa and Clive Bell and nephew of Virginia Woolf. He is renowned as a ceramist artist and for his books on the Bloomsbury artists and a biography of Virginia Woolf. He was appointed Head of Fine Art at the University of Leeds in 1959, and later as Professor of Fine Art, until 1967. In 1978, Stanley Burton suggested acquiring a work by Bell for the Leeds campus. Bell proposed a levitating figure - a recurrent theme in his art inspired by a conjuror's trick he saw as a child - and suggested six potential locations. Stanley and the Vice-Chancellor, Lord Boyle, eventually decided upon a site near the Edward Boyle Library. The work was to be cast in fibreglass with a steel armature. An exciting inter-disciplinary partnership emerged with the Department of Civil Engineering. Dr. Gurdev Singh was responsible for the design and construction of the sculpture's internal armature and the Department was responsible for the installation of the work, which was unveiled by Stanley Burton in October 1982.

One of the most popular public artworks on campus, it has moved several times. It was removed from the Edward Boyle Library site due to the building expansion and was re-sited in the quiet courtyard of the Baines Wing coffee bar. More recently it has been relocated in the Clothworkers' Court, so that it is more accessible to visitors. It is commonly known on campus as 'The Dreamer,' but it is not clear when this title was acquired. It has also been called 'The Astral Lady,' although Bell's original notes make reference to the 'Elmdon Figure'. Whatever its title or location, the artwork is now firmly a key element in shared memory and place-making experience on campus.

Mitzi Cunliffe - Man-Made Fibres

In our catalogue: Man-Made Fibres

The American sculptor Mitzi Cunliffe (1918-2006, née Solomon) was born in New York and is renowned for having designed the famous theatrical mask for the BAFTA award. Cunliffe was active as a designer of jewellery, textiles and glass, as well as teaching in later life. She studied Fine Art at Columbia University from 1935-40. In 1949, she came to England when she married a British academic and moved to Manchester. Her first large-scale public piece was created for the Festival of Britain in 1951 - Root Bodied Forth which was an 8-foot concrete group. In 1955, the same year she designed the famous BAFTA award, she was commissioned to create a major piece for the new Man-Made Fibres building at the University of Leeds. Professor J B Speekman, Head of the Department of Textile Industries, required a piece which would reflect the exciting progress in the field of synthetic fibres. Cunliffe submitted drawings and a maquette for a vast pair of hands with textile fibres crossed between them, to be executed in Portland stone. Man-Made Fibres was unveiled by the Duke of Edinburgh when the new building was opened in June 1956. Mitzi Cunliffe appropriately designed her own dress and jewellery for the event.

Cunliffe spent her entire working life bringing sculpture and architecture together. She wanted her work to be 'used, rained on, leaned against, taken for granted', declaring that her life-long dream 'is a world where sculpture is produced by the yard in factories and used as casually as bricks'. In this case however, Man-Made Fibres is positioned so high on the Clothworkers' Building South that it can easily be missed.

William Chattaway - Hermes/The Spirit of Enterpris...

In our catalogue: The Spirit of Enterprise/Hermes

The flying bronze figure on the east wall of the Roger Stevens building is one of the most prominent, striking sculptures on campus. Originally it was commissioned by the Midland Bank for their London offices in the late 1950s. Chattaway called it Hermes, but his patrons suggested the work be re-named The Spirit of Enterprise because the Greek god Hermes had 'a number of roles, including that of the guardian of less desirable characters'. In 1983, when the Midland building was sold to developers for £30m, it was rumoured that The Spirit of Enterprise was to be sold for scrap. The dilemma hit the national press. Into the breach stepped Chattaway's longstanding patron, Stanley Burton, who sent a cheque to the University of Leeds to purchase the work for campus. The work, weighing four and a half tons, arrived on a low-loader from London and was installed that June. Chattaway was delighted to see the name of the piece revert to his original title, Hermes.

The blank wall is a perfect backdrop to dramatically display Hermes to best advantage and a far cry from its position in London. It is a dramatic example of how public art can change and adapt to new settings and new audiences, creating fresh dialogues with its environment.

Lorna Green - Meet, Sit and Talk

In our catalogue: Meet, Sit and Talk, Conversation, Roof Garden

Lorna Green is a sculptor and environmental artist based in Cheshire, who works in both urban and rural environments nationally and internationally. Her public art installations can be permanent or temporary and are often interactive. She undertook her MPhil at the University of Leeds and was a visiting lecturer in the School of Fine Arts, History of Arts and Cultural Studies from 1990 to 1997. In 1995 she was commissioned to create a site-specific sculpture for the Chancellor's Court; Meet, Sit and Talk is made up of 3 stone circles, each stone bearing a rectangle of polished granite reflecting the sky and surrounding environment. Green explains the sculpture 'is intended to be used - for sitting, for meeting at and to create a socially interactive space' and students can be seen lunching and revising among the stones on sunny days. Green redesigned the whole area in collaboration with landscape architect Allan R. Ruff, who created a garden path recalling the flow of a river, the planting changing shape and colour as the seasons pass.

Lorna Green - Conversation

In our catalogue: Meet, Sit and Talk, Conversation, Roof Garden

In 1999, Green collaborated on a further intervention, Roof Garden, a landscaping project with John Micklethwaite-Howe now reconverted into a sustainable community garden. Green wanted to connect the new garden with her previous work, and so created another sculpture, Conversation. The three standing stones, inlaid with round plaques of black granite, respond to the stone circles and celebrate the dialogue between sculpture and nature on campus. The entire project gained two commendations in the Leeds Architecture Awards 2000.

Austin Wright - Limbo

In our catalogue: Limbo

Austin Andrew Wright (1911 - 1997) grew up in Cardiff where he attended night classes at the Cardiff School of Art before studying Languages at New College, Oxford and pursuing a career as a teacher. He came to Yorkshire in 1937 and settled in Upper Poppleton with his wife Sue in 1946 and was based in the county for the remainder of his life. He created his sculptures in the barn and garden of their 18th century home and by 1954 had given up teaching to concentrate on his sculpture. Initially influenced by Moore and Hepworth in his early figures, he became known for his small lead figure groups and was between 1961 and 64 Gregory Fellow at the University of Leeds. Limbo is a gathering together of 26 lead pieces created from drawings and observations made in sketchbooks on family seaside holidays in Anglesey and Cornwall in the 1950's. One particular drawing, dating from the early 1950s, is marked as Limbo and Praa (a beach on the south coast of Cornwall) and some of the figures relate directly to those in this sculpture, which for many years was displayed in the family garden at Upper Poppleton, on the corner of the patio.