Conflict and Collisions: New Contemporary Sculpture @ The Hepworth, Wakefield

A large leather phallic torpedo-like object hangs in the centre of the Hepworth Gallery. The all-consuming matte black colour is both dead and alive. I don’t want to be in the room with it. Alexandra Bircken’s work is unnerving. This work, along with suspended spheres and other protrusions refer to the B-52 bombers used by the US Air Force in the 1950s. In another room ‘leather skins’ are draped across a series of ladders. They suggest burned and headless firefighters; these costumes are shells of humans without souls intact.

Bircken is one of three artists currently presenting solo exhibitions at The Hepworth this autumn under the umbrella title Conflict and Collisions: New Contemporary Sculpture. These exhibitions, from Bircken, Folkert de Jong and Toby Ziegler, comprise new and existing work with the themes of historical and contemporary combat, man versus machine and the handmade in relation to technological production.

The first you encounter is Charles Sargeant Jagger from Toby Ziegler. A three-metre-high aluminium dismembered human foot occupies the centre of the space. Next to it a 3D printer produces a Newell teapot every eight hours. This little machine seems to be the main attraction for visitors; we are in the midst of an important technological moment where the still fairly exotic method of production is on the cusp of becoming commonplace.

Ziegler’s other work takes a WWI plaster memorial frieze, No Man's Land (1919-20) by war artist Charles Sargeant Jagger (1885-1934), as its starting point. The work, held in the Hepworth’s collection, is on display here and Ziegler mirrors it with his own frieze which does not show any discernible imagery, only textured marks where the surface has been polished. A comment on the access we have to horrific war imagery today. If you can never unsee these images maybe it is better to be blind.

The highlight of the three exhibitions is the last, Folkert de Jong’s The Holy Land. A central diorama or set consisting of a sand pit or makeshift desert landscape has been populated with bronze casts of suits of armour, old cameras and telephones. The armour has been created by 3D scanning suits worn by Henry VIII and is a result of an extended period of research and collaboration with the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. They have an intriguing pop sci-fi feel to them; some figures are covered with a subtle rainbow spray, a kind of nostalgic 1990s grunge t-shirt stencil. De Jong’s work could be from the ancient past, the present or the distant spacey future and this allows the visitor to imagine multiple narratives. Like much of the work on display from the three artists, De Jong’s presentation is weighty and disorientating, pleasingly unsettling.