‘Some Steel’: Sculpture and Steel in Britain, 1960-90

A Leeds Art Gallery display tracing the relationship between sculpture and steel in Britain from the 1960s to 1990.

This display begins with brightly coloured abstract steel sculpture of the early 1960s, including works by Neville Boden, and traces how steel came to dominate British sculpture over thirty years. It features sculptor Garth Evans, whose British Steel Corporation fellowship led to the 1971 photobook Some Steel and works such as Breakdown 1971, alongside the wider story of steel in public art, from the City Sculpture Project to Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's Bottle of Notes in Middlesbrough. The exhibition spans the gallery, artist-run spaces, the street and the outdoor museum, from metropolitan London to the post-industrial North.