Is West Yorkshire the Centre of the art world?

The opening of The Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield is set to place West Yorkshire as a must see destination for anyone serious about twentieth century art. The new collection will bring some of Barbara Hepworth’s finest works to the former mining town, just a few miles away from another major sculpture gallery at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Add in the David Hockney exhibition at Salts Mill and the Leeds Art Gallery and it makes it a compelling region for modern and abstract art from Francis Bacon to Henry Moore, Stanley Spencer to Anthony Gormley.

The project creates a home for Barbara Hepworth’s work in her home town. Many of the works have been in storage at other museums like the Tate or which could not be displayed at the other Hepworth property in St Ives.


The involvement of David Chipperfield in the project also demonstrates the importance of the facility. One of the world’s leading architects has built a bespoke gallery allowing fine views and buckets of natural light to show off the works to their best.

Having visited the building before the installation of the works, I can safely say the interior is simply stunning for art works and is breathe taking. The exterior is more up for debate. The building does connect with the industrial landscape both on land and the canalised river.


Locally it is seen as a drab concrete building in amongst other drab, concrete buildings. The Hepworth sees it as a sculptural design which changes with the light. I’m somewhere in the middle. The design of the building is an interesting jumble of shapes, however it gets lost in the 1970s concrete flats and industrial buildings. A cream Mediterranean colour would make it otherworldly and improve the environment – but maybe I’m missing the point.

The Hepworth also has the advantage of being a stone’s throw from the mainline from London King’s Cross. It makes it an easy day trip, or even weekend escape, from the capital. Those used to the London galleries will get an opportunity to see a different environment. The Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a world away from the Tate Modern in display space and more in harmony with the type of environment Hepworth and Moore’s work were often placed – the civic parks of the British Isles and beyond. Salts Mill is another distinctive gallery.


But what makes Hepworth and Moore special. They brought modernism into sculpture, creating works that were based on natural curves and form. The works increasingly became more abstract but still gave the impression of figures, life and vibrancy. They are appealing to the eye and the touch, using a range of materials from wood to bronze to plaster. There is also a bringing together of classic art and the sort of work Picasso might do, but in three dimensions.

Hopefully the opening will bring a focus on the region’s art and its national importance. With free entry this can only help to inspire the region’s new breed of artists. It will also be interesting to see how it can inspire the young children taken along, with no preconceptions of art. In an area with high youth unemployment and low aspiration, may be it will inspire Wakefield’s children to see what education can do for you.

It will also bring economic benefits to the region. Wakefield is particularly in need of a boost to make it a worthy centre of modern art studies.

The Hepworth Wakefield
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Leeds Art Gallery
Salts Mill

A fascinating video from The Guardian (If a little over edited).

Images: The Hepworth Wakefield, Leeds Art Gallery, The interior of The Hepworth Wakefield and Juame Plensa's work at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Contemplating Jaume Plensa

Normally when I sit down to write up a blog of an event or happening, I like to sit down straight away and relate the experience while the memories are still fresh in my mind.

Due to a hectic four days, I've not been able to this time and, in a way, I'm glad because I've reflected on the Jaume Plensa exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It is also fitting as, in his introduction, Jaume told us "We do not spend enough time in our own space just thinking."

This is demonstrated by a pair of glass brick boxes, just smaller than a telephone booth, that both cut you off from the outside world yet are open and airy. I thought that entering the box would be claustrophobic but far from it. The muffled sounds of the outside world and bright lit space was calming and a place to think, even if its thinking of nothing.

Jaume also said the themes of his work were the self and in the confusion caused by conflicting communication channels that dominate our lives. I personally felt the work was more of the self.

Despite promising to visit for more years than I can remember, this was my first visit to the sculpture park. Jaume Plensa's imposing crouched figures make an impact from the moment you enter the park, with a figure high on a plinth. The figures placed in the park look part of the outstanding scenery across the Valley despite being far from natural.

The silvery bodies view the vistas in calm reflection as if considering themselves and their lives, taking inspiration from their surroundings. Made of letters, these stunning and lifelike sculptures are meant to show how something as simple as a letter turns to a word, sentence, idea and on to being something more like a book.



And this is where my own reflections come in to play. The day after my visited, I was at Twycross Zoo with my family. The zoo specialises in caring for monkeys and I saw how they, like the statues, sat crouched with their arms wrapped around their legs contemplating their surroundings. Monkey's also see a smile as threatening behaviour and they show happiness when relaxed and with a downward turn to the mouth.

Thinking about the pieces in the Yorkshire Scultpure Park, it shows how Jaume Plensa has created something primal and slightly melancholic. But the melancholy isn't something sad, but just a reflective mood that shows a future hope and renewal of spirit.

One of the pieces is made from mesh and have a ghostly quality. You can never quite see them and the they don't impinge on the view but are always there and present. Another sees a series of figures hugging saplings in a quiet area of the gardens.



The exhibition is in two distinct areas. As well as the sculptures in the gardens, there are those in the underground galleries. You move from the brightness of the outside to the dark subterranean world. Had Jaume Plensa not said so, this reserved Englishman would have missed half of the exhibition. The experience is as much about touch and sound as it is about the visual art.

The galleries have a long curtain of verses strung from floor to ceiling separating the outside world from the interior. Running your hand across the letters make them chime, with the tintinnabulations evoking Jaume Plensa's memories of a beaded curtain from his childhood home.

The first gallery has the same crounched figures on the wall in the see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil. The evil here is the stress and anxiety of modern living rather than behaviour. The theme is replicated in the next room with three giant heads looking inwardly at each other.



The third gallery is an experience in itself and photographs do no do it justice. The six foot high elongated heads are lit brightly in a dark room and are so unexpected compared to the other rooms. Similar to the giant head Jaume created near St Helens, these androgynous and beautifully lifelike faces are calm and serene. Although digitally created, they feel ancient and almost living. Their feels to be a presence in the room as if something living inhabits the heads, may be only opening the closed eyes after midnight. A magical set of sculptures.

The final gallery is filled with gongs of varying tones which resound throughout the exhibition space. These red gold gongs are in a circle, filled with the words from the song of songs in the old testament.

The end room shows more detail and information about Jaume Plensa's life and work. It includes a mobile, lit deliberately to make the shadows as much part of the work of art as the figures clinging on to the mobile almost for dear life. This work is constantly changing as the strands of the mobile move round.

Before leaving, I climbed the hill to see the one, major sculpture as tall as a house, looking out across the valley. The work is totally different viewed from the inside than from the outside. With the light fading, it was also fascinating to see how the silver letter sculptures changed from bright silver to red tinged figures to dull grey before being lit up to being almost white beacons shining across the panorama.

My overall impression was this was as good an art exhibition as I remember seeing. This is partly down to the setting of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Having also been to the Compton Verney gallery in Warwickshire a few days after, the vistas of Capability Brown have nothing on the Yorkshire countryside when finding locations for sculptures. No white room in a London gallery could do the sculptures justice either.

The alabaster heads in the third gallery stayed with me, along with the inner contemplation of many of the works and will for a time to come.

The exhibition is on between the 9 April 2011 - 25 September 2011. For more information, visit the YSP website