Figures: Flamborough Head Part 2

Description

This sculpture was commissioned for the Michael Sadler Building during Wright’s tenure as Gregory Fellow in Sculpture at the University. It was moved in 2009 due to building work and relocated to the Brotherton Library in 2011 following conservation.


After reading Modern Languages at Oxford, Wright’s early career was as a schoolteacher. Though he had begun sculpting in his twenties, it was not until he was forty-four that it became his full-time occupation. As his reputation grew during the 1950s, Wright’s work came to the attention of Quentin Bell, then Head of the Department of Fine Art at the University of Leeds. Wright was appointed as the fourth Gregory Fellow in Sculpture at Leeds in February 1961, a post he held until 1964. The regular income that the Fellowship brought him enabled Wright to move from working in concrete and lead to casting in aluminium. He exhibited in Leeds at the Queen Square and Park Square galleries and at Leeds Art Gallery, and his work was included in the exhibition ‘Sara Gilchrist: Personal Choice’ at the University in 1984.


The Welsh-born Wright adopted Yorkshire whole-heartedly, living out his years in Upper Poppleton. The humble sculptor is warmly remembered as ‘diffident, modest, as quick to discount praise as to make light of disappointment.’

Physical characteristics

Category: Sculpture

Medium: aluminium

Accession details

Accession number: LEEUA 1962.009

Accession date: 1962

Credit: © The Estate of Austin Wright

Source: Commission; Wright, Austin

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