Leap of Faith project at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The Domestic Armoury within Bobby Baker's Great and Tiny War artwork is a good example of how contemporary art can fully embrace the involvement of others and how outreach work (in this case with women in the West End of Newcastle who have experienced of abuse, war or conflict) can be an integral part of the artwork. 


I recently found out about another 14-18 NOW project and how this has prompted Leap of Faith, another project involving women who have experience of trafficking, domestic violence or mental ill health. 

© Danny Lawson/PA Wire

Leap of Faith at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP), responds to contemporary artist Katrina Palmer’s The Coffin Jump (2018) – a major co-commission with 14-18 NOW, the UK’s arts programme for the First World War centenary, and YSP. It reflects the courageousness of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). This extraordinary group emerged at a transformative period for women – moving out of passive domestic confinement to enter the battlefield on horseback and administer first aid – and inspired the creation of the artwork.


Led by YSP’s Art & Wellbeing Coordinator, Rachel Massey, Leap of Faith brings together participants from two local authority areas that border the Park, in partnership with Ashiana Sheffield, Kirklees WomenCentre, with Heidi Dawson from Glint [Horse Assisted Development].


Leap of Faith aims to help participants gain the confidence to express themselves, to develop positive relationships, and to build positive new memories. Activity includes creative sessions devised by the participants themselves in conjunction with lead artist Kate Genever and Palmer as well as equine therapy, which has been found to enhance positive behaviour and wellness. Further therapeutic support is provided by group analyst Jacinta Kent, and opportunities for reflection and evaluation have been offered by Dr Harriet Rowley, Lecturer in Education and Community at Manchester Metropolitan University.

© Jonty Wilde

Massey says: “At YSP, we use a range of approaches to help people engage with the art. We are interested in exploring ways to support people to engage with their own creativity and self-expression. This is a unique opportunity to work with women, therapists and artists and create something together, inspired by The Coffin Jump and other art at YSP.


“Throughout the project, we have explored themes of love, loss, friendship, loneliness and connection. The individual moments of breakthrough are too numerous and too personal to describe, but it’s true to say that this project will stay with all the participants for a long time to come”.


Heidi Dawson from Glint says: “Our horses are the true educators in our work. They don’t do role play, so noticing how they respond to our behaviour and energy offers us a unique insight into ourselves and our relationship to the world”.


Leap of Faith is part of YSP’s Arts & Wellbeing programme, which takes inspiration from the New Economics Foundation’s ‘Five Ways to Wellbeing’ and is informed by work with experts including artists, mindfulness practitioners, musicians, yoga teachers and others.

https://ysp.org.uk/media/press-releases/leap-of-faith-project-at-yorkshire-sculpture-park-combines-equine-therapy-and-contemporary-art

A Tree in the Wood by Giuseppe Penone at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The current exhibition in the Underground Gallery at Yorkshire Sculpture Park is A Tree in the Wood by Giuseppe Penone. The exhibition features works drawn from the past five decades of Penone’s career. 

Central to Perone's practice is humanity's relationship with the natural world, and his work addresses themes around the body, nature, time, touch and memory. Perone makes use of a variety of natural materials including stone, acacia thorns and laurel leaves. An ongoing motif throughout his work is the importance of trees to society.

 

One suggestion of this is through Matrice, which consists of a 30 metre long bisected trunk of a fir tree that has been laid horizontally and carefully carved to follow one of its growth rings. The trunk cuts through the separate rooms within the gallery so as to emphasise the shear size of the object and to reflect the way that the tree itself has been sliced and examined.

On the far wall in the final gallery space the artist has drawn around his finger and continued the lines off the paper and onto the gallery walls. Again, this references the growth rings on the tree.

 

All Schools Should Be Art Schools by Bob and Roberta Smith at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Aptly situated by the Learning building at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Rob and Roberta Smith's inspirational statement 'All Schools Should Be Art Schools' is intended to prompt political action. 



The artist made the work in April 2017, after Michael Gove (who was Secretary of State for Education) proposed that Art should be removed from the GCSE core curriculum in England.

https://ysp.org.uk/openair

Alfredo Jaar - The Garden of Good and Evil at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Having studied Architecture, Alfredo Jaar turned to social engaged art as he enjoyed the freedom it gave him. “I am free to speculate, I am free to dream a better world, and I can only do that in the art world”.

Jaar's work questions humanitarian issues such as the refugee crisis and grief. His exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park spans the Underground Gallery and the open air space in front of the gallery.



Outside, in the gravel path leading up to the Underground Gallery, Jaar has installed 101 trees in a grid with walkable passageways between. Masked by, and positioned within the grid of trees there are nine stainless steel frames structures. These are said to reference ‘black sites’, the secret detention facilities operated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) around the world where human beings are being tortured and killed.

"I will not act on the world if I do not understand the world." ALFREDO JAAR

In the first room in the gallery the audience meets a wall of bright light forming one of the sides of an installation booth in which visitors are invited to sit and watch a film. The film, The Sound of Silence (2005), reveals the story of a young victim of the 1993 Sudanese famine. Nearing the end of the film, a sudden flash of light reinforces the drama within the narrative.



Jaar's play on light and dark is continued in another room in which a full colour image taken by photographer Koen Wessing of two grieving daughters morph into black and white silhouettes. Shadows (2014) continues in the adjacent space where six additional images taken on the same day show the family's trauma after the murder of a farmer.

"Generally we are taught how to read, but we are not taught how to look." ALFREDO JAAR



A Hundred Times Nguyen (1994) is a work that is based on an experience that Jaar had when he was visiting ‘refugee detention centres’ in Hong Kong in 1991. In the centre of the gallery there is a vitrine containing the story that lead to the work. Jaar had requested permission to photograph a girl, Nguyen Thi Thuy, who later became emotionally attached to him. Jaar photographed her five times at five-second intervals. Out of the hundreds of images he took while he was in Hong Kong, it was these five images that Jaar was most drawn to. It is these that he has replicated and displayed in various orders in A Hundred Times Nguyen. Personally, I do not think that the images need to be shown 100 times for it to be powerful. It was actually the story that I was moved by, and I felt that the images were unnecessary.

Tony Cragg: A Rare Category of Objects at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

"A ‘radical materialist’, Cragg defines sculpture as a ‘rare category of objects’, and takes a taxonomic approach to his own practice, something which is reflected in the exhibition. 

The wit and will to analyse the properties of all of the planet’s resources and use them to make new things is unique to human beings, along with the intuition to sort, order and categorise the things that exist and that we bring into existence.

Cragg’s extraordinary career has its roots in a fascination for, and exploration of, the possibilities of the material world.

From the small scale to the monumental, Cragg’s prolific practice is the outcome of a constantly questioning and experimental symbiotic process of thought and manual making, which always starts with drawing. With the support of his studio, Cragg makes his sculptures by hand, each evolution of thought taking form and inspiring the next. His intuition to sort and categorise, evident in his childhood fossil collection, is expressed in the significant early stacked series in which the accumulated content of his studio, including stones, wood, and books, are formed into geological-like sculptures."

http://www.ysp.co.uk/exhibitions/tony-cragg-a-rare-category-of-objects

I admire the high level of craftmanship that goes into making Cragg's work. It is clear from his sculptures that he has a great understanding of the materials he uses. For example, in the sculpture above, the form appears to work with the natural layers and curves within the wood itself.

I enjoy his relatively simple sculpture made from circular metal components of decreasing size (see image below). It is one of the few items in the exhibition that shows his use of found objects. These objects each have a history; they reference the time in which the work has been made, adding another dimension to the work. 



Another piece using found objects was the sculpture covered in playing dice. In this instance, it appeared as though the sculptural form had been made from one material, which had then been covered completely in dice. This sculpture seems slightly at odds with the others as it appears as if the dice have been used to 'decorate' the surface as opposed to being constructed from them.



Overall, I was disappointed by the lack of variety with this exhibition. Sculptures throughout the exhibition share the same kind of shapes and materials and there was a limited amount of development from one room within the gallery to the next. I know that Cragg has produced work that I found more interesting than what was exhibited at YSP, and I am frustrated that the exhibition did not show a broader, more varied range of work.                                                                                           

Night in the Museum curated by Ryan Gander at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

‘When I look at sculptures of the human figure I am frequently left thinking of all the things that they’ve seen. This is the world of the silent onlooker.’ Ryan Gander



"Night in the Museum represents the work of over thirty artists including Don Brown, Angela Bulloch, Patrick Caulfield, Jacob Epstein, Liam Gillick, Roger Hiorns, David Hockney, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Kerry Stewart, and Rebecca Warren.




Artist Ryan Gander has curated this exhibition consisting of works belonging to the Arts Council collection. He has displayed a selection of figurative sculptures alongside a range of post-war British artworks that often feature the colour blue. Blue is an important colour in Gander's work, and for him it represents "the abstract ideas often found in modern and contemporary art." The figures are positioned so as to be admiring the surrounding artworks.


My initial impression of the exhibition was that it was very cluttered, leaving little space around the work, but having spent some time in the gallery I enjoyed the sense of sharing the viewing experience with the figurative sculptures, closing the gap between the audience and the artwork.

Current KAWS exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

It is a tradition that when I visit my parents in Yorkshire, I pay a visit to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Last weekend was no different.

As I walked through the grounds in glorious sunshine, I discovered the latest open air sculptures by New York based artist and designer, KAWS.

These giant forms are reminiscent of characters from popular culture and comic books. Despite their dominating presence, I could not help but feel sorry for these rather disappointed looking figures.

http://www.ysp.co.uk/whats-on/this-season

Bill Viola on being an artist and working with video

Wise words from Bill Viola

Bill Viola at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Simply put, the Bill Viola exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park is exquisite. 

The underground gallery has been transformed into a series of dimly lit spaces in which the eight different videos are housed. The atmosphere is solemn, and there is a sense of calmness. One cannot help adopting a slower pace. Although many of the video works have individual soundtracks, they are similar, meaning that they tend to blur into each other as one travels on a journey through the gallery.

"Considering universal themes of life, death, love and spirituality, Viola gives tangible visual form to abstract psychological and metaphysical experiences. He explores facets of the human condition and holds a stark and intimate mirror to our strength, fragility, and the impulses and inevitabilities that unite us. The eight works installed in the Underground Gallery continue Viola’s investigations of the unseeable, the unknowable, and the place between birth and death."

The exhibition features new and old work, and is dominated by works involving water.

 "His new work, The Trial (2015), features a young woman and a young man, both bare-chested and on separate screens. Each are doused with a sudden and unexpected succession of different coloured liquids. Their ordeal intensifies then wanes as the cycle progresses and changes, from despair to fear to relief and then purification."

As with The Trial, other works have an element of duality, for example, The Innocents (2007) consists of one screen showing a figure moving away from the camera, and the other showing a figure moving towards the camera. As the figure walks into the cascade of water, the image turns from its grainy black and white state into high definition colour. Similarly, as the figure moves out of the water, the image quality reverses. 

It is hard not to be impressed with the immensely clear and rich footage within all of the works. Man Searching for Immortality / Woman Searching for Eternity (2013) is a life-sized video diptych of the naked elderly man and woman projected onto two separate slabs of black granite that are leant against the wall of the gallery. This is video as sculpture. The detail is immaculate, with every wrinkle visible. Viola deals with the content with honesty, and in no way do the performers seem unnatural or staged. 

It is rare that I visit an exhibition consisting purely of video installations, yet alone that I am captivated by each and every one of them enough to watch each for its full duration. Bill Viola's exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park is the exception to the rule, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

http://www.ysp.co.uk/exhibitions/bill-viola

Wave - poppies installed at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

My parents live about 20 minutes away from Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP), and pretty much every time I visit my childhood home I like to make a trip to YSP to enjoy the beautiful expansive green grounds and see the current exhibitions.

Over my lifetime, YSP has grown from strength to strength, and last year it was awarded the 2014 Museum of the Year. YSP is one of the four galleries making up The Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle, and with increased recognition, it continues to attract a healthy and varied audience. It seemed particularly busy today, maybe because of the nature of the current exhibition. 

"Wave, a sweeping arch of bright red poppy heads suspended on towering stalks, by artist Paul Cummins and designer Tom Piper, rises up from YSP’s Lower Lake, reaching over the Park’s historic Cascade Bridge.

The sculpture – along with Weeping Window, a cascade comprising several thousand handmade ceramic poppies seen pouring from a high window to the ground below – was initially conceived as one of the key dramatic sculptural elements in the installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London in the autumn of 2014. 

Over the course of their time at the Tower, the two sculptures were gradually surrounded by a vast field of ceramic poppies, each one planted by a volunteer in memory of the life of a British and Colonial soldier lost during the First World War. In their original setting they captured the public imagination and were visited by over five million people."

http://www.ysp.co.uk/exhibitions/poppies-wave

If I am completely honest, I was a little underwhelmed by the piece. Although I didn't see the poppies when they were installed in London, and so am basing my judgement purely on the documentation of the installation in the capital, Wave lacked the impact and intensity of the original artwork. I think with works like this, the wow factor is created through its scale and therefore with far fewer poppies, it is hardly surprising that the impact of Wave is reduced as opposed to when it was part of a bigger whole. 

Regardless of this, the work has attracted a huge audience, including those who have never been to YSP before. One of the questions this raises is whether it is worthwhile to exhibit a smaller part of an installation which has less of an impact in order to prolong its life and increase its reach to a wider audience. 

Ursula Von Rydingsvard at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

sculpture, materiality, form, scale, mark-making, carving, space, rock formations, cracks, creases, caves, caverns, layers, fossils, compression, wood, cedar, physical 

bowls, containers, dishes, pattern, vessels, drawing, installation, hole,

framing, frame, ring, link, circle, life, age, bark, 

Ai Weiwei in the Chapel at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Despite being unable to travel due to Government-imposed passport restrictions, Ai Weiwei has developed an exhibition at the Chapel at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

His work, which draws attention to human rights abuses and his experience of the Chinese Government treating him unfairly, is by its nature, very thought provoking and so is well suited to this quiet, contemplative space.

The Iron Tree (2013) which stands outside the Chapel is made from numerous sections that have been attached together using a traditional Chinese method.

Inside the chapel, the installation Fairytale - 1001 Chairs (2007-2014), and sculptures, Ruyi (2012), Lantern (2014) and Map of China (2009), all make one question the individuals position in relation to others in society.

Fiona Banner, WP WP WP at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The title of the exhibition, WP WP WP derives the sound of helicopter blades in motion. In the current exhibition at Longside Gallery, Fiona Banner has suspended two sets of Chinook helicopter blades from the ceiling which rotate in opposite directions to each other and vary in speed. Although the top speed is not enough to produce real vibrations in the space, the presence of these structures moving is powerful and mesmerising. Despite the absence of the rest of the Chinook aircraft, one gets an impression of the weight and size of these flying machines. The elegance and precision with which they spin, carefully programmed to skim past each other without touching, can be likened to the wings of a beautiful creature such as a dragonfly, so it seems wrong that these blades are the force behind these potentially dangerous vehicles.

The grace with which the Chinook aircrafts can move is demonstrated in the film Chinook (2013) in which Banner documents the dance-like quality of Chinook flight at military air shows. Removed from their military function, the Chinook follows an acrobatic and beautiful routine intended to impress viewers and show off its agile possibilities. As the tannoy announces the end of the performance, the audience applaud and the Chinook dips its front and raises its back, its own way of taking a bow. This emphasises the notion of the Chinook as an entertainer.

The windows of the gallery space in which the Chinook blades are installed are covered in UV reductive vinyl which obscure the view out of the gallery onto the picturesque scenery of the Bretton Estate. At seemingly random points within the vinyl, small parts of the vinyl have been revealed to create shapes of 'full stops' in a variety of fonts. Only when peering through the full stops can one see the view properly. This rather subtle intervention focuses ones attention on Chinook, but also links in to Banner's ongoing preoccupation with language, and the title, Ha-ha,(2014) links to her interest in the way walls or other boundary markers are set in a ditch so as not to interrupt the landscape.

Wp Wp Wp (2014) is a wall drawing that establishes its own rhythm and flow through the repetition of this simple word.

Another video, Tete a Tete, (2014) documents two motorised windsocks interacting with each other, reminding me of the precision with which the Chinook blades relate to each other. Outside the gallery, a single motorised windsock moves in isolation; a lonely cry for companionship.

For more information please visit http://www.ysp.co.uk/exhibitions/fiona-banner-wp-wp-wp

Another reason I am proud of being from Yorkshire

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park wins the Art Fund's award for museum of the year


http://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/news/newsreel/yorkshire-sculpture-park-wins-ps100k-museum-year-award?utm_source=Weekly-News&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Yorkshire-Sculpture-Park-wins-£100k-museum-of-the-year-award&utm_campaign=11th-July-2014

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28228750



"The open-air Yorkshire Sculpture Park has been named the museum of the year.

The judges described it as "a truly outstanding museum with a bold artistic vision".

The park, situated in the grounds of Bretton Hall in Wakefield, was first opened to the public in 1977.

Picking up the £100,000 prize, founder Peter Murray said: "We've tried so hard to develop something which is unique not just in this country but also in Europe and beyond.

"This award makes us feel we are moving in the right direction."

The park has held exhibitions for the likes of Eduardo Paolozzi, Lynne Chadwick and Ai Weiwei. Its collection of works by Henry Moore is one of the largest open-air displays of his bronzes in Europe.

The museum of the year shortlist included the Hayward Gallery and the Tate Britain in London and the Ditchling Museum of Art in East Sussex."

Angie Lewin at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

I've seen Angie Lewin's prints on greetings cards, but never in their original state, so I was keen to visit her 'A Natural Line' exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

I enjoyed seeing the sketches and studies that lead to the finished work. 

Sometimes I find her large prints to be too cluttered, but I found her smaller scale work was simpler which I prefer.

Similarly, the small studies on driftwood are not too dense, and the unusual shapes forces Lewin to adapt the composition to suit the driftwood.

Garth Evans at Longside Gallery

I'm looking forward to seeing this exhibition when I visit Yorkshire in April.

www.ysp.co.uk

The Arts Council Collection presents a new exhibition of sculpture by Garth Evans, selected by his friend and former student Richard Deacon, which will open at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park on 23 March 2013. This is the first major Garth Evans exhibition in the UK in over 20 years and will feature 28 works spanning the period 1959–1982, many drawn from the Arts Council Collection. The show will reconsider Evans' contribution to sculpture in this formative period, moving from early reliefs, to large colourful fibreglass sculptures through to entirely floor-based works. It will include a re-creation of Evans' seminal work Breakdown (1971) which was stolen shortly after its first public viewing. Evans has recreated the work based on surviving drawings, photographs and original plans and it will be installed immediately outside the Longside Gallery. Born in Manchester in 1934, Evans studied at the Slade School of Art (1957–60), exhibiting regularly in London from 1962 until 1991. One of Britain's most innovative sculptors—a generation younger than Anthony Caro and coming before the New  British Sculptors of the 1980s, which included Richard Deacon as well as Tony Cragg and Richard Wentworth. Evans is known for his use of geometric, asymmetrical forms and a commitment to using everyday materials such as plywood, fibreglass and polythene. Evans influenced a generation of British sculptors not just through his innovative approach to sculpture but also as a teacher at Central St Martin's School of Art. Turner Prize winner Richard Deacon's selection of Evans' work results from extensive conversations between the two sculptors and focuses on work created in the first two decades of Evans' long and varied career. The show will bring together the Arts Council Collection's significant holdings of Evans' work, alongside key loans from major UK collections including the British Museum, Leeds Museums and Galleries and Tate as well as a selection of key pieces from the artist's studio. It will feature many sculptures that have not been seen in public since they were first exhibited in the 1960s and 70s. Influenced early on by American Abstract Expressionism in painting, one of Evans' central preoccupations was how to create sculptural forms that carried no reference to the world. Pieces such as Untitled No. 37 (1967) will show how Evans investigated this, working with the then new, versatile and lightweight medium of fibreglass, to depart from the sculptural traditions in bronze inherited from Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Evans' 'carpet' pieces of the 1970s will also be exhibited, and will demonstrate his testing of a variety of materials including polythene, which he used to form a tactile sculptural membrane in St Mary's No 1 (1978). Later pieces such as Wedge II (1979), made from the salvaged debris from a collapsed shed outside Evans' studio, demonstrate the radical departure the artist instigated in British sculpture in the 1970s. Evans' achievements of the 60s and 70s were perhaps overshadowed by his almost immediate retreat from the British art scene, moving to the USA in 1979. Dramatic new directions are also apparent in the series of 41 drawings he made in the US in 1982. The Yaddo Drawings, 11 of which have been borrowed for this exhibition from the British Museum, where made during a five-week residency at the Yaddo artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. Exuberant and inventive, the drawings introduce a multitude of forms and 'bodies' that anticipate later work.