At the tail end, as it turned out, of the warm, sunny weather this spring we decided to spend a day at the excellent Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield. It is a superb place both for its collection of art and for its setting. It truly is a park of come considerable acreage – I estimate that we walked a good 8k at least – and very lovely; beautiful place to spend a day, and I have no doubt that we will return there on many future occasions.
Much of the art work is permanent – there is a core of work by Henry Moore which doesn’t change, and an increasing collection of Andy Goldsworthy’s very large outdoor pieces which are becoming literally part of the landscape, which I suspect is his intention. Others come and go, and anyway the context, the weather, the mood are all infinitely variable and such variations give the place a dynamic and a liveliness.
I’ve put 15 images here of the 50 or so that I made. Sculpture seems to sit easily in monochrome, I suppose because its essence is about structure, form and texture from which colour might even be a distraction. This is also true I think of the “natural sculptures” that are about the place; tree trunks obviously placed where they are, but otherwise left for the forces of nature to shape.
I haven’t been very imaginative with titles I’m afraid!