Audio-described Highlights of Fragment and Form: Emii Alrai, Mónica Mays, Dominique White

Welcome to the audio-described highlights of the exhibition Fragment and Form: Emii Alrai, Mónica Mays, Dominique White. Fragment and Form explores the dialogue between history and materiality in sculpture through the work of three contemporary artists.

We've created three audio highlights: 'Without Ornamental Value' by Mónica Mays, 'the domination of Nothing' by Dominique White, and 'Mast Head, Half Flag' by Emii Alrai. Each recording is around three minutes long and includes descriptions of the artworks and poems created by Nadine El-Enany. The content has been produced by DesCript, a blind-led artwork description collective.

This recording also includes information about where to find the QR codes for the audio descriptions in the Sculpture Galleries at Henry Moore Institute.

Image: Entrance to the gallery with artwork inside Emii Alrai's 'Wallow’s Brace' 2025. Photo by Rob Harris.

Introduction to Fragment and Form: Emii Alrai, Mónica Mays, Dominique White

(Transcript) Hello, my name is Joseph Rizzo Naudi and I'm a blind writer and part of the artwork description collective DesCript. 

You're in front of a large sculpture by Mónica Mays called Without Ornamental Value. It's made up of an assemblage of found objects and organic materials. From the gallery ceiling, a beige-coloured, tapering form, about two and a half metres long, hangs over an old wooden school desk. Emerging from the form's lower end, a thick bunch of dark, hair-like strands somehow penetrate the top of the desk and continues downward to spread in a Y-shaped form, roughly a metre long, on the light-coloured gallery floor. 

The materials are: palm wax, palm fibre, a school desk, steel, canvas, vellum, and the resins, damar, myrrh and kemenyan. We asked the writer Nadine El-Enany to write a poem based on a collaborative description conversation we held in front of the artwork. Her poem, called ‘A language that is not English’, describes the sculpture in detail and gives a vivid sense of its presence in the gallery. The poem is about a minute and a half long.


A language that is not English 

 

It’s a sad kind of light, 
like a house in daytime, the curtains drawn. 
The feeling is warm, the light yellow, 
sinister like inside a cave. 
The smell of the room is the colour brown. 
Its shape square, the sculpture in the centre. 
It hangs from the ceiling by a rusty chain, 
it’s beige, fleshy, eight feet long, 
rugged, bruised, bumpy terrain. 
It looks like a limb, part of a leg, 
parsnip, stalactite, rotisserie kebab. 
It’s skin that’s sick, sweet smell. 
At its slimmer end, hair protrudes, 
punctures an old school desk. 
Found object. Graffiti. So and so loves. 
Tipp-Ex. A language that is not English. 
The hair tumbles out the other side. 
Dense, matted, dark and frayed. 
Like the tail of a mermaid made of hair, 
knotted and splayed across the gallery floor. 


Image: Mónica Mays 'Without Ornamental Value' 2024. Photo by Rob Harris.

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(Transcript) The domination of Nothing 2023 by Dominique White 

Hello, my name is Joseph Rizzo Naudi. I'm a blind writer and part of the artwork description collective DesCript.

You're in front of a large, floor-based sculpture called The domination of Nothing by Dominique White. This dark, tangled, skeletal sculpture stretches roughly four meters along the gallery floor and is about two and a half meters tall and two and a half meters wide. Its charred form contrasts starkly with the bright white wall's light grey floor and the natural light that enters through the gallery's double-height windows. The sculpture is assembled from rusted wrought iron, sisal, destroyed sail, burnt mahogany and high-volatile charcoal. 

We asked the writer Nadine El-Enany to write a poem based on a collaborative description conversation we held in front of the artwork. The poem, called ‘Something Bad Happened Here’ closely describes the sculpture, constructing it phase by phase as if the artwork were being made in front of us. The poem is about a minute and a half long. 



Something bad happened here 

If you were to take a cool light and make it blue 
like stepping outside or into the sea 
if you were to make a plaster cast of a buoy, 
dye it black, shatter and shove it 
into giant cloth covered chicken wire nests, 
three hooped skeletons, the rest burned away 
if you were to take an old sailing rope, 
unravel it, unravel it and stick it in here, 
rope, twine, wire mesh, 
fabric from a sail falling to the floor 
if you were to take four Mahogany harpoons, 
curved and blackened shafts, barbs on their heads 
so they can’t come out again 
(all Mahogany is old; trees felled by African slaves) 
if you were to set fire to it, submerge it 
like a shipwreck found on the seabed, imagine 
there was more debris carried away by wind and rain, 
a scattering of charcoal remains 
if you were to cover, cover your tracks, 
move the matter to an evidence locker 
if you were to be sad and angry at the same time 
the quiet exhaustion after violence 
if you were to come back here next year 
would you be surprised to find this gone? 


Image: Dominique White's 'The domination of Nothing' 2023. Photo by Rob Harris.

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(Transcript) Mast Head, Half Flag 2023 by Emii Alrai. 

Hello, my name is Joseph Rizzo Naudi. I'm a blind writer and part of the artwork description collective DesCript.  
On the wall in front of us is Mast Head, Half Flag, a sculpture by Emii Alrai. 
This artwork is made of two dark brown plywood boards, about the same size and shape as household doors, mounted side by side to form a square. There's a gap of about an inch between them, through which we glimpse a thin white strip of gallery wall. The board's dark surfaces display a whitish plaster form, sculpted in low relief. It spreads its irregular, curving way towards the four corners of the square created by the plywood boards. 

The materials used to make this piece are: plywood, hay, straw, metal wire, gypsum, hops, jute and pewter nails. 

We asked the writer Nadine El-Enany to write a poem based on a collaborative description conversation we held in front of this artwork. Her poem, called ‘It maps my body, a body’, describes the sculpture as it appears in the gallery space, and suggests a number of possible interpretations for that indeterminate plaster form. The poem is about a minute long. 


It maps my body, a body 

Dark wood door-size panels, mounted on the wall, 
side-by-side, portrait, a thumbprint apart. 
Stained a reddish hue, mahogany, dark chocolate. 
Shiny, the glare of gallery lights. 
Aerial view of a white plaster island 
spanning the panels. A mountain range 
slapped on, seasoned with sawdust. A hole makes a lake. 
Four large nails keep the peaks in place. 
A map split in two, or a reclining figure. 
Soft limb island, lost from the main. 
A face, looking away, upwards to the right, 
silhouette of a nose and chin. 
A map that isn’t understood. 
It maps my body, a body. 
A visual relationship to fragments of bone, 
a fossil or a fish. 


Image: Emii Alrai, 'Mast Head, Half Flag' 2023. Photo by Rob Harris.

(AD) Emii Alrai 'Mast Head, Half Flag' 2023

The Henry Moore Foundation was founded by the artist and his family in 1977 to encourage public appreciation of the visual arts. We run two venues, in Leeds and Hertfordshire, showing a mix of Moore’s own work and other sculpture.

Our aim is to make a hub for sculpture, connecting a global network of artists and scholars, continuing research into the art form and ensuring that sculpture is accessible and celebrated by a wide audience.