Image: Yoko Terauchi, Ebb & Flow, 1988
The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds is showing Ebb & Flow: Bookworks by Yoko Terauchi from the Research Library, a free display of book-based works by the Japanese artist Yoko Terauchi (b. 1954). After a first run over the summer, it is open again in the institute's Study Gallery until 10 January 2027.
The display centres on five rare bookworks held in the institute's Sculpture Research Library, all published by Coracle Press, the Camberwell imprint the institute links with artists of the New British Sculpture. They are shown with photographs documenting Terauchi's installations between 1983 and 2024.
Terauchi trained in Tokyo, completing her studies at the Women's College of Fine Arts in 1977 and graduate work the following year, before taking advanced sculpture courses at Saint Martin's School of Art in London from 1979 to 1981. According to the institute, her time there led her to question sculpture made mainly for form and visual pleasure, and to aim instead for work that conveys how she sees the world. She has since exhibited internationally and taught as a professor at Aichi University of the Arts.
Her installations and bookworks challenge fixed habits of looking and classifying. Central to this is her treatment of paper: she regards a sheet as a three-dimensional object with six sides and, therefore, a single unbroken surface rather than a front and a back. The institute presents her books as an expanded form of sculpture in which object, image and page are no longer kept apart.
Two works illustrate the approach. In Terra (1984), cut lines move pigment between stacked sheets to leave shadow-like images. Ebb & Flow (1988), which gives the display its title, is a single folded sheet painted red on one side and blue on the other; diagonal tears open it up to show its inner structure and unsettle the opposition between inside and outside.
The display also recalls Terauchi's earlier link with the city. During a week-long residency at Leeds City Art Gallery in 1984 she made works including Hot Line 19, built from industrial telephone cable, and Cut Drawing 1, the first of her paper-based series.
The Sculpture Research Library holds more than 30,000 items on sculpture, including a growing collection of artists' books. An audio guide with transcript accompanies the display.
