The Hepworth Wakefield

Ego Geometria 4, for example, can be found in York Art Gallery, while the iterations number 7 and number 8 are in Graves Gallery Sheffield and in the Arts Council Collection.

In 2025, for the major retrospective Helen Chadwick, Life Pleasures, the Hepworth Wakefield recreated the entire series of Ego Geometria some, except for one work that remained in a private collection.

The title, Ego Geometria Sum, translates directly as I am geometry and calls to mind the words of philosopher René Descartes, cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am.

But in opposition to the Cartesian idea of the mind and body split, this series draws attention to the completion of mind and body.

Her self-referential and self-conscious art, which question the body and perceptions of female identity, still resonates with generations of artists, including women who put feminism at the center of their practice.

She turned her own body into subject, object, and conceptual material, a line of inquiry, a starting place, and a point of departure, a kind of canvas on which she could imprint her ideas with an unapologetic self-expression.

Thankfully, her work has received more attention in recent years, with exhibitions at Tate Modern, the Hepworth Wakefield and Leeds Art Gallery.

If you have the fortune of visiting Nottingham Castle, you can still see her Ego Geometria Sum 9 High School in person.

It's our first solo show.

But many of you will already know Emii's work because of her, I would say, prolific in a way, um, museum kind of support because she's, she's had, um, institutional shows at spaces like the Towner and the Henry Moore, uh, Foundation and the Hepworth Wakefield, and so many incredible international shows as well.

But most recently, she had an installation on the top of Carlton Hill in Edinburgh, looking out over the whole city.

It's like kind of high, high, high hill that has the most spectacular views, and it really was a highlight of the Edinburgh Arts, um, Festival in summer.

And now it's time for the work of the week.

Orleans House Gallery in Twickenham in London this week opens Ronald Moody Sculpting Life, a variation on an exhibition about the Jamaican-born British artist that began at the Hepworth Wakefield in 2024.

Among the works in the exhibition is Seated Sorong Figure from 1938, and I spoke to Khadija Coakley, the artist and curator who's made a new film about Moody in relation to the exhibition about it.

Khadija, Ronald Moody makes this sculpture that we're talking about, Seated Sorong Figure, in 1938.

Tell us about that.

Is it an impressionistic film? Is it more of a documentary film? Tell us about it.

Okay, so I was the commissioned artist on the 2024 Ronald Moody Sculpting Life at the Hepworth Wakefield.

After that, there was a post that was presented after the gift was given to the Hepworth from the Ronald Moody Trust and they asked for someone to come and basically create an archive and a session of the works.