May 3, 2013
The shortlist for the prestigious Art Fund Museum of the Year Award has been announced and The Hepworth Wakefield has made it into the final 10. The Art Fund are responsible for funding various collections and exhibitions across the UK including The Hepworth Family Gift which is a key part of the gallery’s display. The award consists of a prize fund of £100,000 given to the winning institution that shows innovation and creativity in bringing collections to life. Alongside this a further award is given to one of the finalists for their learning programme, recognizing achievement in engaging children and young people with the arts.
The other 9 finalists from across the country are:
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.
The Beaney, Canterbury.
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.
Horniman Museum and Gardens, London.
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge.
Narberth Museum, Pembrokeshire.
Preseton Park Museum and Gardens, Stockton-on-Tees
William Morris Gallery, London.
Each finalist is visited by a panel of judges including Stephen Deuchar Director of the Art Fund, Sarah Crompton the Daily Telegraph Art Editor, artists Bob & Roberta Smith plus historian, author and broadcaster Bethany Hughes. The Hepworth was recently visited on 24 April 2013 where the judges were taken on a tour of the gallery, showcasing the exhibitions, learning studios, shop, café and auditorium. The judges spoke to staff and volunteers to gage the efforts made to engage a wide audience. For more info see Sarah Crompton’s response to the visit here.
The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony on 4 June 2013, and broadcasted live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row at the V&A, so be sure tune in!
To celebrate the nomination The Hepworth Wakefield are inviting all our visitors to show off their photography skills by submitting their best Photos inspired by the gallery. There are some great prized on offer including an Apple iPad Mini, for more details and how to enter see here. The call for submissions is open until 15 May 2013.
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May 1, 2013
The Arts Council Collection exhibition at YSP’s Longside Gallery this spring is Garth Evans: An Arts Council Collection exhibition selected by Richard Deacon, which is open every day, 11am-4pm, until 27 May 2013. Longside Gallery is a 2km walk from the YSP Centre and, at this time of year, a perfect walk for spotting bluebells in the woods on Oxley Bank.
The Arts Council Collection was delighted to welcome Garth (pictured far left) and Richard to Longside Gallery back in March. Garth taught Richard when he was a student at St Martin’s School of Art and they have remained friends ever since. Lizzie Simpson, Sculpture Coordinator at The Arts Council Collection says: “It was wonderful to see the exhibition take shape and to hear the dialogue between the two artists as they worked together to present three decades of Garth’s work.“
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April 19, 2013
Husband and wife team Lucy + Jorge Orta have created a giant 15-metre cloud installation for St Pancras International station, which was unveiled in London this week. Cloud: Meteoros is suspended above the station’s Grand Terrace, previously home to the Olympic rings. Watch a film on bbc.co.uk
Cloud: Meteoros is the first artwork in a series of Terrace Wires pieces commissioned by HS1 Ltd for the station. Look out for work by the Ortas coming to Yorkshire Sculpture Park this summer.
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March 13, 2013
A new exhibition of work by four artists, each competing for £16,500 prize money and the title of sixth Northern Art Prize winner, opens at Leeds Art Gallery on 28 March and will feature new work by shortlisted artists Margaret Harrison, Rosalind Nashashibi, Emily Speed and Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan.
The exhibition this year takes a new spring slot in the programme at Leeds Art Gallery, which has given the artists more time to work with Sarah Brown, Curator of Exhibitions at the gallery and chair of the Prize judging panel, to rework existing pieces and create new work. Sarah says:
“The artists have made a number of new pieces especially for the show which gives this year’s Northern Art Prize exhibition an immediate sense of the artists’ current practice which is great for the artists, judges and audiences. Each artist also has responded to the main ground floor galleries where the exhibition takes place and produced work that interacts with the doorways, walls and corners, making the exhibition distinctive to Leeds and the Northern Art Prize.”
The Northern Art Prize was founded in 2006 by Director Pippa Hale in collaboration with design and communications agency Logistik Ltd and Leeds City Council who continue to support the Prize in its sixth year.
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March 12, 2013
Turning away from Yorkshire momentarily, William Turnbull at Chatsworth, a major exhibition of the important 20th century artist’s work that includes large-scale outdoor sculptures, paintings and drawings, is now open in the spectacular setting of Chatsworth House and Garden.
The exhibition is curated by Yorkshire Sculpture Park with the artist’s son Alex Turnbull and follows YSP’s 2012 exhibition William Turnbull at 90. The exhibition catalogue includes texts by Clare Lilley, Director of Programme at YSP and Patrick Elliott from Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
Beyond Time, a film about the life on William Turnbull, screens on BBC Four tonight and Friday 15 March 2013. Read Alastair Sooke’s review in The Daily Telegraph.
William Turnbull at Chatsworth continues until 30 June 2013.
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March 1, 2013
A new exhibition by Yinka Shonibare MBE opens at Yorkshire Sculpture Park on Saturday 2 March 2013. Taking place in three of YSP’s indoor galleries and the open air, FABRIC–ATION features over 30 vibrant works from the period 2002 – 2013 including sculpture, film, photography, painting and collage, with many works never before seen in the UK.
The exhibition is also the premiere of a new series of sculptures for the public realm. Two Wind Sculptures, over six metres in height and richly painted with Shonibare’s signature batik pattern, appear in the landscape like large, glorious handkerchiefs caught by the wind.
See FABRIC–ATION at YSP until 1 September 2013.
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February 7, 2013
Opening on Saturday 16 February 2013, the new exhibitions at The Hepworth Wakefield feature contemporary artists Alice Channer, Jessica Jackson Hutchins and Linder Sterling.
The works will be arriving over the next few days and we are expecting ceramics, painting, casting, large-scale installations (including a hammock-like piece outside in the grounds of The Hepworth Wakefield) and beautiful collages from Linder.
We decided to find out a bit more about Linder and her inspiration behind the exhibition…
Linder has been primarily working with collage for the past three decades, spanning her iconic 1970s posters and record sleeves for punk band Buzzcocks to the light-box sculptures that will be on display at The Hepworth Wakefield. She works with wide range of imagery from dainty floras and birds to more risque images of the female form (the Buzzocks’ album cover features a woman with an iron for a head and grinning mouths for nipples!) meaning that he work is often full of juxtapositions.
Studying in Manchester, Linder became heavily involved in the punk and post-punk scene in the city, founding band Ludus in 1978, her work has drawn influence from musical collaborations since, she counts Morrissey as one of her friends. For her exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield, Linder will be collaborating with musician Stuart McCallum from The Cinematic Orchestra, choreographer, dancer Kevin Tindall from Northern Ballet and fashion designer Pam Hogg for a performance piece on the 11 May called The Ultimate Form.
The Hepworth Wakefield has some footage of one of the first rehearsals of the piece over on their YouTube channel. Linder has described “the legacy of Barbara Hepworth providing the discrete pulse for this new work” – which is apparent in the shapes that the dancers make with their bodies.
Northern Ballet dancers Hannah Bateman, Jessica Morgan and Victoria Sibson in The Ultimate Form
Photo: Darren Goldsmith
There’s one more thing we must share about Linder – did you know she wore a dress made from meat way before pop star Lady Gaga? Performing on stage at Manchester’s Hacienda in 1982, her dress was adorned with discarded chicken meat stitched into a black net dress.
Linder’s exhibition opens at The Hepworth Wakefield on the 16 February and runs until the 12 May. Admission is free and the gallery is open 10am – 5pm Tuesday – Sunday and until 9pm on the third Thursday of the month. The gallery is also open on Mondays during school holidays.
Image: Linder Sterling, The False Bride, 2012. Courtesy Stuart Shave / Modern Art, London © The artist
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December 14, 2012
The new exhibition from artist and designer Mark Hearld is now open in the YSP Centre.
Birds and Beasts showcases Hearld’s practice which stems from a love of the British countryside, curiosity for objects and a magpie approach to collecting. Hearld has taken inspiration from YSP’s 500-acre historic estate and its inhabitant wildlife to create new work.
The Park’s visitor centre and Upper Space gallery are decorated with Hearld’s hand-painted wooden animals; three-dimensional, hand-decorated ceramic hares; collages in hand-painted frames, lino-cuts, and limited edition litho prints. A flock of hand-decorated wooden pigeons hang in the concourse and found objects chosen by the artist feature in a characteristically eccentric window display.
Hearld works closely with skilled craftsmen to realise his ideas, using Curwen Studio in Cambridge to make litho prints and Daniel Bugg at Penfold Press, Selby to produce linocuts. For this latest project, Hearld has established a new relationship with a Stoke-based mould maker to produce a range of limited edition ceramic hares, exclusive to YSP.
Born in 1974 and based in York, Hearld studied illustration at Glasgow College of Art before completing an MA in natural history illustration at the Royal College of Art. His work is now exhibited all over the UK and commissions include set design for 2005 film Nanny McPhee and a range of ceramics for Tate. The exhibition coincides with the publication of a first monographic book, published by Merrell, and the launch of Hearld’s first hand-printed wallpaper for St Jude’s, which recently won an
Elle Decoration Design Award.
In a new short film Mark speaks about what influenced his exhibition at YSP and some of the processes and techniques used to create his unique pieces.
Mark Hearld: Birds & Beasts can be seen at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 17.02.13
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December 4, 2012
Barbara Hepworth, famously renowned for her abstract sculptural work, exhibits a different side to her practice in the current exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield, Barbara Hepworth:The Hospital Drawings. The collection to date features over 30 works including some making their debut appearance in Wakefield, where her sculptural work is permanently exhibited, fittingly in the city she was born and grew up in.
The drawings of surgical scenes, created through a process using Ripolin Paint and pencil, were made in Post-War Britain during the late 1940’s, and reflect the close connection between art and the surgeon’s expertise, precision and craft. The harmonious nature of the images highlight the craft and concentration in an operating theatre. Such images were produced alongside the launch of the NHS, clearly influential to Barbara Hepworth who supported ideas of social cooperation and the reconstruction of Britain to develop a fairer, more inclusive society.
The drawings are not obviously linked with her more famous sculptural works, though Group1 (concourse) is exhibited alongside the 2D work. From this it is clear that the sculptural qualities of the arrangement of the surgeons correspond with the piece, but maybe more importantly relate to Hepworth’s lifelong study of the human figure in landscape, in this case the landscape being the surroundings of an operating theatre. Group1 (concourse) is one of 3 sculptures within the exhibition, with a large collection of the drawings as a backdrop.
You can see Barbara Hepworth: The Hospital Drawings at The Hepworth Wakefield until the 3 February 2013.
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November 30, 2012
Leeds Art Gallery is preparing for the colourful launch of ‘Liberty and Anarchy’, the first major UK solo show in over ten years by Australian artist Nike Savvas, which includes the UK premiere of several new works.
A central installation ‘Liberty and Anarchy’ takes over the largest gallery and involves 18 large screens which hold hundreds of individually placed, taut plastic, brightly coloured ribbons. The installation can only be fully appreciated in person as it creates a three-dimensional moiré effect. This new, large-scale installation incorporates panels fixed from the floor to the ceiling, allowing audiences to view the colourful ‘cascade’ of ribbons and the alternating, shimmering colours.
Savvas, 48, is best known for the internationally acclaimed exhibition ‘Atomic: Full of Love, Full of Wonder’ (2005, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne) in which thousands of brightly coloured polystyrene balls were suspended in the gallery, shimmering gently in the breeze of carefully positioned fans, but which could only be viewed from a distance. Playing with the creation of an all encompassing installation version of a moiré painting, ‘Liberty and Anarchy’ will allow visitors to immerse themselves in the colours, movement and depth which have become synonymous with her installations.
In a second gallery space Savvas premieres eight 3D geometric shapes of varying sizes made from wood, which have only previously been exhibited in her home country. The shapes, some of which are split open whilst others remain complete, have been designed and crafted according to a meticulously worked mathematical formula. Savvas then uses wool and steel to create her own unique moiré motif on the surfaces of the shapes, a bespoke design which took a year to develop. Alongside these structures, seven moiré black and white paintings use the same mathematic formula, and are in effect, painted representations of the 3D shapes.
The exhibition opens to the public on Friday 7 December and closes on February 24 2013.
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