YSP SPRING 2019
YSP Spring 2019
‘One of the best art visits in the world. It really is that good.’ Will Gompertz, BBC Radio 5 Live
Cover: Giuseppe Penone, Luce e ombra, 2014. Private Collection. Courtesy the artist. Photo © Jonty Wilde Hilary Jack, No Borders, 2018. Courtesy the artist. Photo © Jonty Wilde
Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is the best place in the UK to experience modern and contemporary sculpture, presenting work by some of the world’s most extraordinary artists, including Ai Weiwei, Barbara Hepworth, Andy Goldsworthy and Henry Moore, in over 500 acres of beautiful, historic parkland and six indoor galleries. This spring, we open our beautiful new light-filled visitor centre, The Weston. The building’s purpose-built gallery opens with an interactive installation by Delhibased artists Thukral and Tagra. The Chapel is transformed with To Breathe, an enthralling installation using light and mirrors by Kimsooja. In Longside Gallery, Yinka Shonibare CBE’s exhibition Criminal Ornamentation explores the cultural and social dimensions of the use of pattern in art.
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YSP Spring 2019 Dillan Marsh and Eleanor Clare investigate the connections between real and imaginative spaces with a digital and audio artwork in the open air. And Visiting Artist Connor Shields challenges perceptions of masculinity. Continuing in and around the Underground Gallery, Giuseppe Penone’s extraordinary exhibition A Tree in the Wood traces the artist’s evolving and deeply thoughtful investigation of humanity’s intimate connection to the natural world. New work in the open air this season includes No Borders (2018) by Hilary Jack, a neon artwork which displays the words of Amelia Earhart; Lucy + Jorge Orta’s Gazing Ball (2018), a contemporary interpretation of an 18th-century architectural folly; and Untitled (2010) by Roger Hiorns, a sculpture comprising two engines from a decommissioned military surveillance aeroplane.
Photo © Mike Dinsdale, courtesy William Birch
The Weston: Take a New View
Built on a historic quarry site, The Weston is a beautiful, light-filled building, designed by architects Feilden Fowles and situated less than one mile away from M1 Junction 38. Comprising a restaurant, gallery space, public foyer and shop, The Weston has been carefully designed to have minimum impact on the site and to fit sympathetically with the historic landscape. Its low profile protects it from the motorway and forms a sheltered, sunken terrace with stunning views across the Park towards the Lower Lake and Bretton Hall. Naturalistic planting, including a wild-flower roof, is inspired by 19th-century Yorkshireman and plant adventurer Reginald Farrer. Visitors will enjoy enhanced physical, creative and sensory access to the landscape, ecology and heritage of the historic estate, as well as the sculpture presented across the landscape. The new gallery will showcase a changing programme of temporary exhibitions, with an interactive project by the dynamic Indian artists Thukral and Tagra inaugurating the space.
The restaurant, with open kitchen and Scandinavian-inspired interior, including a wood-burning stove, offers table service and a fresh, seasonal, and sustainably produced menu. The shop features exciting new product ranges developed in collaboration with craftsmen and women across the UK, taking inspiration from nature and the landscape.
The Weston is supported by Arts Council England Wakefield Council The Garfield Weston Foundation Dunard Fund The Foyle Foundation The Sackler Trust The Wolfson Foundation B&M Retail Plc The Arnold Burton Charitable Trust The John S Cohen Foundation Mtec The Holbeck Charitable Trust Jane and Alan Foale and other funders who wish to remain anonymous. Visitors to the Park contributed over £50,000 in donations to the project.
Photo © Mark Fleming
Welcome to The Weston, YSP’s new £3.6million visitor centre, which opens to the public on Saturday 30 March 2019.
Current Artists & Projects
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Bread, Circuses & TBD, 2018. Š and courtesy the artists
Thukral and Tagra: Bread, Circuses & TBD 30 March–1 September 2019 The Weston Gallery #ThukralAndTagra Thukral and Tagra invite families, friends, and strangers to wrestle with the issues faced by farmers in India through their installation Bread, Circuses & TBD. Known internationally for their highly engaging and profound projects that raise awareness of important issues, the Delhi-based artists continue their ongoing investigation into kushti, a traditional form of wrestling practiced across India, and its importance to farming communities. Through their first wrestling project, Match Fixed (2010), the artists came to understand the complex difficulties facing farmers in India who have little or no control over their land or livelihood, leading to desperate situations. Informed by their long enquiry into game theory, including research into the Don Pavey Collection held in the National Arts Education Archive at YSP, the central installation
Farmer is a Wrestler features a kushti wrestling mat with numbers that relate to key problems such as global warming and drought. Visitors are invited to wrestle with these problems by physically connecting with combinations of numbers, echoing the game of Twister, including through adopting traditional wrestling manoeuvres. A huge and intricate painting in the shape of a wrestling arena is split into sections and shown on the gallery walls. The paintings comprise five layers, which link to Farmer is a Wrestler. The layers include images of wrestling figures, inspired by the farmers and families that were interviewed by the artists, and illustrations of the crops and agricultural activities that are vital to their livelihoods. In each painting a vibrant neon colour highlights the distressing issues that these individuals face. Thukral and Tagra have produced a set of seven limited-edition Farmer is a Wrestler terracotta dishes to accompany the exhibition.
Exhibition generously supported by Nature Morte.
Current Artists & Projects 6/7
To Breathe: Bottari, 2013, mixed media installation with The Weaving Factory, 2004–2013, the artist’s voice performance sound, 5.1 channel, 9:14, loop. Photo Jaeho Chong
Kimsooja: To Breathe 30 March–29 September 2019 Chapel #Kimsooja With a lightness of touch, Kimsooja transforms the historic chapel with To Breathe, an enthralling installation using light and mirrors which blurs expected boundaries. The floor, covered with a mirrored surface, provides an entirely new way of seeing, seeming to open up and unfold the space, making solid surfaces and confining structures appear fluid and expansive. By placing diffraction film on all the windows, the light that enters forms a myriad of rainbow spectrums across the space, which are reflected infinitely via the mirrored floor. Responsive to the natural environment, the installation changes according to the light quality and intensity, making every experience different and unique. A soundtrack of the artist breathing accompanies the visually spectacular yet meditative installation, creating an intimate and shared encounter.
Kimsooja’s work references traditional forms of female labour and craft, such as sewing and weaving, to investigate the role of women. Making quilts with her mother was the initial stimulus to adopting needlework as part of her practice, and since then the artist has travelled extensively exploring the cultural importance of clothing, textiles and the associated acts of making. Kimsooja also considers the concept metaphorically, seeing the body as a needle that weaves together the fabric of lives, cultures and cities, celebrating a shared humanity regardless of geographical borders. Kimsooja’s 14-metre-high sculpture A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir (2014) is also sited in Lower Park. This elegant spire was developed with scientists at Cornell University, New York, who formulated a nanotechnology film applied to the acrylic windowpanes that closely mimics the iridescence of butterfly wings. Event – Artist Talk 18 July / 18.30 / £10, YSP Members £8 Hear Kimsooja discuss her work, influences and the inspiration behind To Breathe at YSP. Exhibition generously supported by Axel Vervoordt Gallery.
Current Artists & Projects
Respirare l’ombra, 2008. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Paris, London. Photo © Jonty Wilde
Until 28 April 2019 Underground Gallery and open air #GiuseppePenone ‘It’s hard to imagine a more splendid monument to the fate of our planet’ Rachel Spence, Financial Times
Albero folgorato, 2012. Private Collection. Courtesy the artist. Photo © Jonty Wilde
One of the most eminent artists working today, Giuseppe Penone’s extensive exhibition can be experienced in YSP’s light-filled Underground Gallery and across the historic landscape. Works drawn from the past five decades of Penone’s career, including many never shown in the UK, trace his evolving and thoughtful consideration of humanity’s intimate relationship with the natural world. His poetic practice addresses themes around the body, nature, time, touch and memory, played out across different materials from stone, acacia thorns and graphite, to thousands of laurel leaves. Reflecting the importance of trees as a recurring motif throughout Penone’s work, the remarkable Matrice (2015) stands at the heart of the expansive gallery and at 30 metres long, spans almost its entire length. The bisected trunk of a fir tree, it has been placed horizontally and meticulously carved to follow one of its
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Giuseppe Penone: A Tree in the Wood growth rings. In another space, Propagazione (1998/2018) is a delicate drawing made directly onto three walls, emanating from the artist’s fingerprint. In the open air, nine bronze sculptures stand in dialogue with the landscape, the tallest of which, L’ombra del bronzo (2002), is an imposing 16 metres high. Further into the Park, Idee di pietra – Olmo (2008) is sited in a clearing near to the 18th-century Upper Lake. Encircled by woodland and native flora, it conveys an air of mystery and quiet intrigue, speaking directly to its surroundings. A full-colour catalogue with photographs of the exhibition documents this major project. Essays by Martin Gayford and Clare Lilley share insights into Penone’s unique way of viewing the world. Event – Penone in Conversation 1 March / 19.00 / £10, YSP Members £8 Join Penone as he discusses his work, influences and the inspiration behind his YSP exhibition, with YSP’s Director of Programme, Clare Lilley.
Exhibition generously supported by Marian Goodman Gallery, Litestructures and the Henry Moore Foundation.
Yinka Shonibare CBE, Line Painting (detail), 2003. Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © Yinka Shonibare CBE. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2018
Criminal Ornamentation: Yinka Shonibare CBE curates the Arts Council Collection 5 April–16 June 2019 Longside Gallery Curated by the Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare CBE, Criminal Ornamentation explores the cultural and social implications of pattern in art. The exhibition takes its title from Ornament and Crime, a 1908 essay by theorist Albert Loos, which ridiculed the use of ornament as an indication of poor taste and the lowest level of cultural development. As a counterblast to this bombastic text, Shonibare presents an explosion of pattern and colour, bringing together works from across the visual arts including a politically-charged wallpaper by designers Timorous Beasties, a subversive tattooed sculpture by Edward Lipski, and a flowing honeysuckle design by May Morris. This exhibition reveals Shonibare’s personal selection from the Arts Council Collection,
supplemented by key loans from the V&A, Crafts Council and the William Morris Society, and from individual artists based across the UK. Threaded throughout the decorative surfaces of these works are many challenging themes, from politics and colonialism to gender stereotypes and inequality. Criminal Ornamentation invites us to question traditional hierarchies of art and to celebrate the radical deviancy of pattern. Criminal Ornamentation features nearly 100 works by over 50 artists including: Boyle Family, Susan Derges, Laura Ford, Alexander McQueen, Milena Dragicevic, Lis Rhodes, Bridget Riley, Yinka Shonibare CBE, Caragh Thuring and Bedwyr Williams. The exhibition is accompanied by a variety of free drop-in gallery activities and a full programme of events. Event – Yinka Shonibare CBE: In Conversation 16 May / 18.30 / £12, YSP Members £10 Don’t miss this very special opportunity to hear the artist discuss Criminal Ornamentation within the context of his wider practice. Shonibare will share his thoughts with Beth Hughes, Curator of the Arts Council Collection. The Arts Council Collection is managed by Southbank Centre, London and includes the Sculpture Centre located at Longside, Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Visiting Artist: Connor Shields
From 20 March 2019 Open Air / #MarshAndClare
8–23 April 2019 #ConnorShields
Dillan Marsh and Eleanor Clare explore the connections between real and imaginative spaces, inspired by the Bretton Estate and traditions of folk tales and lullabies.
Connor Shields, the recipient of YSP’s 2018 Yorkshire Graduate Award, returns this spring as a Visiting Artist.
The Poacher’s Lament & Other Half Heard Tales is a digital and audio artwork, which visitors can experience via a smartphone app. It features a collection of fictional narratives spoken, sung and performed by both real and fictional characters, and creates a multi-sensory experience for visitors as they wander around the Park. Event – Meet the Artists and Pop-up Exhibition 23 & 24 March / 11.00–16.00 / Free, drop in Drop in at the Boat House to meet Marsh and Clare, and try out their GPS artwork.
A recent graduate from Leeds Arts University, Shields’ work explores perceptions of ‘maleness’ through sculpture and performance. He challenges ideas of working-class masculinity in his use of materials and processes. Combining industrial objects such as bricks and scaffolding with materials and techniques that have ‘feminine’ associations, such as knitting, he attempts to question societal principles that shape us, based on the gender binary. Event – Meet the Artist and Pop-up Exhibition 19–22 April / 11.00–16.00 / Free, drop in Drop in at the Boat House to meet Shields and find out more about his YSP project.
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Exhibition generously supported by Bergen Kommune, Billedkunstnernes Verderlagsfond, Office for Contemporary Art (OCA) Norway, and Echoes.
Woods, Upper Lake. Courtesy the artists
Current Artists & Projects
Dillan Marsh and Eleanor Clare
Courtesy the artist
Events
Photos © David Lindsay / Jonty Wilde
Events at YSP range from artist talks and sculpture courses to family workshops and landscape tours. Here are some of this season’s highlights but you can find out more about all YSP events and book online at ysp.org.uk/events
Lines of Colour: Textile, Print, Sculpture and Land 17 & 24 Mar (two-day event) 11.00–16.00 / £40 (aimed at age 8+) Experiment with printing, ancient Japanese shibori dyeing, and stitching to develop your own unique artwork full of colour, print and texture, and achieve your Explore Arts Award.
The Poacher’s Lament & Other Half Heard Tales: Launch Event 20 Mar / 18.30–19.30 / Free Embark on a guided sound procession around the Upper Lake, led by two masked, mythological gatekeepers. Celebrate the spring equinox and the launch of Dillan Marsh and Eleanor Clare’s new GPS audio artwork.
The ARTcart 30 & 31 Mar, 19–22 Apr & 25 May 11.00–16.00 / Free Roll up, roll up: the ARTcart is popping up again. Bring your family and take part in some art making, art thinking and art playing.
Mindful Moments on Slow Art Day: To Breathe 6 Apr / 09.00–10.30 / £15 A unique opportunity to take part in an intimate ‘slow viewing’ of Kimsooja’s installation To Breathe in the Chapel. Experience a private viewing of this remarkable installation and discover your power to connect with contemporary art.
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An Introduction to the Bretton Estate: Walk and Talk 6 Apr & 4 May 14.00–15.00 / £3 Find out about the fascinating history of YSP’s grounds, once a private estate. This hour-long walk focuses on the features and characters associated with the development of this unique place.
Hidden Forest Open Day 13 & 20 Apr / 11.00–16.00 Free (aimed at under 5s) Adventure awaits in the Hidden Forest! Come and enjoy this magical space and have time together beneath the trees, jumping, laughing, making, singing, and exploring your right to play.
Spring Poetry Walk: Penone’s Writings 27 Apr / 11.00–13.00 / £5 A beautiful spring walk interspersed with poems, contemplations, text and writings from Giuseppe Penone, shared by performance artist Natalie Bellingham.
YSP Members: A Timeline of Sculpture Walking Tour 3 May / 11.00–12.30 £5, guests £7 Join YSP Friend and volunteer Kathryn Barnes for a tour of sculpture in the open air at YSP. Placing key sculpture into historical context, the tour will take in a range of 20th-century works, and explore their wider impact on the world of contemporary sculpture.
Museums at Night 2019 17 May / 17.00–21.00 Enjoy the grounds of YSP until late or book on to a special event, including An After-Hours Adventure, Twilight Lake Walk and Nightfall in the Woods. Find out more and book online at ysp.org.uk/events
Wax Casting 18–19 May (two-day course) 10.00–16.00 / £165 Explore the possibilities of working in wax, led by artist Liadin Cooke, to create your own sculpture using casting as a method of production.
Information CONTACT US Yorkshire Sculpture Park West Bretton, West Yorkshire WF4 4LG (for SatNav use WF4 4JX) +44 (0)1924 832631, ysp.org.uk OPENING TIMES Until 29 March 2019 Grounds, YSP Centre & Shop: 10.00–17.00 The Kitchen & The Café at YSP Learning: 10.00–16.00 Galleries: 10.00–16.00
YSP FRIENDS Save money on parking with a YSP Friends membership. Find out more at ysp.org.uk/friends
Individual gallery and catering opening dates and times vary, please see ysp.org.uk/visit
From 30 March 2019 Grounds, YSP Centre & The Weston: 10.00–18.00 Shop & The Weston Shop: 10.00–17.00 The Kitchen, The Restaurant & The Café at YSP Learning: 10.00–17.00 Galleries: 10.00–17.00 Individual gallery and catering opening dates and times vary, please see ysp.org.uk/visit
Kimsooja
ADMISSION Admission to the whole of YSP is free. The only charge is to park your car. Prices: £3 (up to 1 hour), £6 (1–2 hours), £11 (all day). Payment by cash or card any time during your visit or online for up to 7 days after. As a charity, all proceeds support YSP.
DIRECTIONS One mile from M1, junction 38. Follow the brown heritage signs on the A637 to the YSP Main Entrance. For SatNav use WF4 4JX. ACCESSIBILITY Free use of mobility scooters – please call ahead to book on +44 (0)1924 832631. FACILITIES Self-service restaurant, tableservice restaurant (from 30 March) and café (all with highchairs), shops, toilets and baby changing
Thukral and Tagra
YSP CODE You’re welcome to find out how the sculptures feel, unless requested otherwise, but please don’t sit or climb on them. Feel free to run, jump and roll on the grass but please remember that YSP isn’t your average park. Please no ball games, kite flying, tree climbing, skating or skateboarding. Find out more at ysp.org.uk/visit GROUP & LEARNING VISITS YSP welcomes all kinds of groups and offers coach parking, catering packages, talks and workshops. Find out more at ysp.org.uk/groups GET CONNECTED You can find YSP on the following sites yspsculpture YSPsculpture YorkshireSculpturePark YorkshireSculpturePark yspsculpture
Giuseppe Penone
NATURE MORTE Axel Vervoordt Gallery
Dillan Marsh and Eleanor Clare
YSP supported by
A festival of sculpture across Leeds and Wakefield 22 June–29 September 2019 yorkshire-sculpture.org
artscouncilcollection.org.uk
YSP is an accredited museum and registered charity, number 1067908. All details correct at time of print. Design by Founded: wearefounded.com
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Information / Shop
YSP Shop Highlights
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Providing a unique alternative to high street shopping, YSP Shop houses a distinctive selection of products from international artists, contemporary designers and makers. ysp.org.uk/shop
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Jonny Hannah Limited Edition Screenprint / £150 Norman Ackroyd Limited Edition Silk Satin Scarf / £95 Tom Pigeon: Form Circle Necklace in Brass & Yellow / £48 Rosie Brewer: Medium Wooden Serving Board / £25 Alison Wren: Toast Rack / £45
A festival of sculpture Across Leeds and Wakefield 22 June – 29 September 2019 yorkshire-sculpture.org Free entry Photo © Jonty Wilde
A festival produced by Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle: Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Art Gallery, The Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park