RARELY seen pieces from Bradford Council’s arts collection are being put on display as part of a new exhibition looking at over a century of sculpture.

Concepts and Form, which opened at Cartwright Hall Gallery on Saturday, features sculptures acquired by the Council over the past 114 years, and some are being put on display for the first time.

Others will be on show after being brought out of storage for the first time in years.

As with most art collections, Bradford Council is only able to display a fraction of its collection in its galleries and museums, meaning many works of art, including bulkier items like statues and sculptures, spend much of their time in storage.

The new exhibition coincides with a project being carried out by Art UK, Sculpture called Connecting UK Communities with their Sculpture Heritage. It aims to improve online and physical access to the nation’s finest collections of publicly held sculpture, and around 20 pieces belonging to Bradford Council will be included in their finished work - which will allow people to search for the pieces of art online.

On display at the Lister Park based gallery are classically styled marble and stone statues, modern, abstract sculptures and pieces inspired by South Asian and Indigenous American culture.

Pieces include Ace of Innocence, a marble bust by Alfred Drury, sculpted in 1906, and Knight Dress by Perminder Kaur - a framed sculpture based on traditional Sikh armour.

Work by Alfred Drury and Avtarjeet Dhanjal is also on show.

Bradford Council’s art collection includes around 200 sculptures, and those on display can be seen at Cartwright Hall and Cliffe Castle Museum in Keighley.

Nilesh Mistry, curator, said: “It is a really exciting exhibition, and it is great that it coincides with the Art UK project. It provides the opportunity to show off a lot of these works. Art UK will be coming next week to photograph a lot of these pieces. With every museum, national or local, there is not the space or resources to have everything on display all the time.

“One Art UK documents this we will probably get more requests for pieces to be loaned out to other museums, which is great for Bradford.

“As well as some wonderful pieces of folk art, we have more traditional sculptures from when the gallery opened in 1904.

There are pieces from different periods, different approaches, different styles and by artists of different cultures.

The exhibition runs until July 22.