I take tours round the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I always try to get people to recognise their own enjoyment from looking at and making things as well as helping them to question any pre-conceptions they have, if they might get in the way of that enjoyment. I also want to re-assure people that everyone is entitled to like particular pieces of art more than others, but the more you invest in the art the more you get out of it.
Below is a text of the sorts of things I talk about.
We will look at some of the history of the Bretton estate and its relationship to art and specifically sculpture. We look at various elements of art that have echoes in the landscape.
People have always made art. The date of the earliest recognised art is well beyond 10,000 years ago now. There are examples in the British Museum of sculpted figures that go back thousands of years and there are some that are very similar to the Wallace and Gromit animations and before them to Morph. Below is an example from their catalogue of a piece of Greek art thought to be a toy.
Without getting too involved in art history, we will try to understand different approaches to making visually, emotionally and intellectually stimulating objects. We will talk about the physical making of the art and how that affects the result. The tour takes a slightly different form each time, as I tailor it to the people on the tour.
As a starting point, we look at the HaHa, which is the sunken ditch used to keep livestock under control without spoiling the view. Part of this structure runs under the main visitor centre. The HaHa is a symbol of the way landscape is manipulated like an artwork. Like many garden designers Richard Wood, who is described as a minor Capability Brown, wanted the control of a wall, but also didn’t want the wall to interrupt the view. This allows the landscape beyond the wall to seem as if it is a continuous part of the main garden. At the same time it separates the agricultural from the domestic, turning the grounds into a sort of theatrical performance based on illusion. Illusion is a common feature of much art. If you look back at the visitor centre before heading up to the Bothy Gallery, there is a sculpture by Jaume Plensa that plays with illusion, being a steel door to nowhere.
The mixture of practical and artistic decision making that has gone into the park starts with the location itself, which is in the rolling hills of Yorkshire. We go to the top of the park near the walled garden and the Bothy gallery. The view from here looks out across to the other side of the park, where there are some permanent sculptures, such those by Andy Goldsworthy, Alfredo Jaar and David Nash. There is also the Longside gallery which belongs to the Arts Council. As I re-write this there is a Shaun Henry seated figure looking across at us and the hot water bottle by Erwin Wurm and the hot water bottle is looking right back.
This particular landscape is not part of the higher Pennine ranges but is a more benign area built on the geology associated with coal measures. Unlike the hills round nearby Huddersfield, there is a reasonable amount of rain, but not an excessive amount. This means that from earliest times the landscape has been one that is fairly good to work and also good to look at. It is also worth noting that the fields round here are separated by laid hedges, rather than dry stone walls, so artists that come here and build dry stone walls are not reflecting the locality.
One of the initial impulses in nearly all art is based on the materials available. Artists look at the materials and wonder what they can do with them. This is particularly true of sculpture. There is a story that many sculptors had looked at the piece of marble used to make Michelangelo’s David and rejected working on it because they could not envisage the piece that would safely come out of it. As artists look at the materials and wonder about potential, so people look at the landscape in the same way. At first this may be purely practical but at some point it starts to encompass the use for pleasure or to make a statement of some sort.
From the walled garden view point you can also see how the Underground Gallery has disappeared. The design of this is based on the HaHa we viewed earlier so the architects have used the location itself to influence the design and built on previous artists’ ideas to create a new work. If you are lucky you may also catch the automated lawnmowers at work on the roof of the gallery. This is an interesting performance in itself.
Like many northern areas this one seems to have been occupied by Brigantes before, and presumably after, the Romans arrived. Also, while many of the place names a few miles to the west and north of the park reflect the Viking influence, this part of the country evidences the more farming orientated Saxon influences. There is some evidence of larger Saxon land owners in the area, but the name Bretton is of unknown origins and Guy de Bretton seems to have named himself after the area.. Personally I find it interesting that the French speaking Norse people of Normandy invade Britain and hand out parcels of land to people who presumably hailed from Brittany, which itself was home to invading Cornish Celts. It is presumably from this date that the rise of the park starts, though most of it is much later. In the Domesday Book the area is described as Waste. Most of the areas between here and York were described as such because William got angry with rebelling barons and ordered the farms and crops to be razed.
There is another interesting parallel here with much art, which also often requires people of power and money to support it. Today it is not just wealthy patrons who yield the power of patronage, but also corporate and civic bodies. Related to patronage is the idea of art as status symbol. I have a theory that the curved wall behind us is designed to be seen and marvelled at by those entering the park form the opposite side of the valley.
While we are stood next to the Bothy gallery in the wall, it is worth reflecting that the house itself is considerably lower down in the park. This area would probably marks the border between the domain of staff and the pleasure grounds of the residents of the house and their visitors. We might look at the gardener’s residence and think of it as a rather magnificent place to live, especially with such a glorious view, but the residents of the house wanted their statements of power and taste lower down the hill where the climate will be even gentler. When we are looking at a piece of art or landscape it often helps to remember that the original creators may have viewed it differently to us. While both the artist’s intention and the audience perception are both part of the performance of a piece of art, the audience may need to be careful that they do not completely misinterpret the work. I am reminded of some young students doing a drama course who interpreted the Brecht play ‘The Good Person of Szechwan’ as being against the oppression of Chinese Communism, when the play pre-dated the communist takeover.
Although we do not visit it on the tour, the Bothy Gallery was one year home to an exhibition by Emily Speed who built movable shelters that were then placed in various parts of the park landscape, including the lake, and then photographed. Like Andy Goldsworthy who often originally presented his work as photographs of temporary structures in woodlands, Speed’s work directly connects the sculpted piece with landscape and makes it a performance that is then recorded.
Another artist who exhibited in the Bothy Gallery was Thomas J Price, who had his first retrospective there. He sculpts relatively small intimate portraits of people, but his response to this place was to sculpt a much larger figure, Network, which is currently down over the bridge that separates the two lakes.
From the Bothy gallery we move down onto the formal terrace, currently home to a set of sculptures by Daniel Arsham that play with the idea of revering sculptures from antiquity, what knowledge you need to understand pieces of art and the whole idea of making art that is ‘archival’. The choice of pieces automatically asks questions about the relationship between the location and the art. While they may have colours that do not necessarily reflect their immediate surroundings, they are designed to interact with the surroundings and to sit in the landscape as part of the landscape. It is worth remembering that the location of works in the park may change and may be chosen in conjunction with the artist or by the park’s curators.
Talk of location raises the issue of art made to go indoors and that made specifically for the outdoors. A sculptor has to think differently about their art if it is going to be outside. When Yinka Shonibare had an exhibition here, he realised that the majority of his art was only suitable for indoors. His response was to design some new sculptures based on the outdoors and specifically YSP. He has continued to make similarly themed outdoor sculptures.
Moving on down the park we head towards the Camellia house. On the way we pass Barbara Hepworth’s Family of Man. These sculptures were made using wire and wood frames covered in plaster. Hepworth directly modelled and shaped the plaster which was then cast into bronze by a foundry. This point in the tour usually prompts a discussion of the different means of production for sculpture. In this case there was a life size original that was then turned into metal. Sometimes sculptors work directly on the final sculpture and I personally often find these better, as in Hepworth’s own plaster and metal versions of sculptures in the Hepworth Gallery. Barbara Hepworth’s approach to the human figure in sculpture nicely contrasts with that of Elizabeth Frink, some of which are the other side of the pond and copse. The Nikki de Sant Phalle Buddha shows another contrasting angle.
Next to the Camellia house there is the last remaining Sophie Rider sculpture in the park. She often makes drawings and maquettes that are actually scaled up and produced by others in a workshop but has also worked direct in clay on wire former and on a large. These are then cast in bronze. The role of the sculptor is that of designer, but may not always be directly that of producer. Her sculptures represent what it is like being her and also what it is like being a woman moving through the world full of pre-conceptions of what a woman should be.
Often outside the Camellia house there is a sculpture by Peter Randall Page, carved out of a massive block of stone. Peter also has a workshop in the park. The current one manges to be both grounded and also fluid. Like much of the landscape, the sculpture manipulates our ideas of scale. For a considerable time there have works in the park by Jaume Plensa, who sometimes manages to make solid stone look almost translucent or even a bit like plastic. From many angles Plensa’s wire structures also look solid, our own perceptions seemingly filling the gaps. This is another interesting option that artists have, to emphasise the nature of the materials or to play games with our perceptions of them.
The Camellia house used to contains a fountain by William Pye. Fountains often occupy a place between sculpture and architecture. Like most sculptures, fountains have no direct functional purpose, but their technical nature can alter our perspective on them. A fountain that doesn’t work has lost a major part of its design purpose. Being of stainless steel, Pye’s Off Spring had particular resonance in the camellia house where it was in opposition to the otherwise traditional feel of the building. I often contrast the architecture of the Camellia House itself with that of the student building that is being preserved just up the slope from it. This often raises a discussion of quite contrasting views!
At one time the idea of opposition was in action outside the Camellia house where Martin Creed’s I Beam 70 blocked the steps down. His use of industrial artefacts has played with the idea of purpose and challenged common ideas of the sculptor’s decisions on shape, size and placement in relation to beauty and meaning in sculpture. The location here also mad a statement about the sculpture because it was hard to get a full view of it. Currently in the same spot is Bag of Aspirations by Kalliopi Lemos which takes another approach to asking similar questions. The handbag is modelled on an exclusive Birkin bag and the Camellia House, the nearby Orangerie and the Hothouse that historically stood the other side of the Sophie Ryder were all aspirational objects of desire.
Down by the lake we come across Promenade by Anthony Caro, originally designed for the Tuileries in Paris. Envisage, if you like, Renoir’s paintings of social gatherings in the same place, featuring people moving, with parasols and in front of the background Hausmann architecture. This sculpture often divides tour parties more than many. It is certainly one that children enjoy running in and out of and this perhaps ties in with the idea of the promenade, where adults would walk to see and be seen while children played and ran, if given a chance. Personally it has strong resonances with my time at art school in the 1960’s, where we would camp out amongst piles of scrap metal, cutting, welding and shaping such abstract but symbolic forms. At the same time it also reminds me of my visits to Barrow shipyard, where my grandad welded ships. It is interesting to contrast the painted, protected surface with the patina developed on steel sculptures left to develop their own patina.
From here we move alongside the lake and into the field containing a number of Henry Moore’s sculptures. Despite their huge and solid appearance they are hollow metal. Some of these outdoor sculptures have suffered from too much physical attention by visitors. There is a real tension between the ability to physically interact with the sculptures and the desire to preserve them. In my own dabbling with sculpture, carpentry and pottery the physical act of feeling and shaping the object is important and galleries and Sculpture Parks often separate us from this ability.
Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth both attended Art School in Leeds. They were contemporaries and parallels can be seen between some of the motifs in their works. Both also expressed the desire to see their works in landscape and there are early drawings by Moore of his work in a landscape situation very similar to this part of the park. I think it is important to stress that Moore ranged across some of his themes (e.g. sitting woman, reclining nude, totem inspired works) throughout his life. They do not particularly follow different ‘periods’ of work. I also find it interesting that there are parallels between artists. As an example, if you look at the drawings Moore made in the underground shelters during the second world war, I think you will see a great similarity to the wire wool like structure of the Sophie Ryder.
Next we go and sit in James Turrell’s Deer Shelter Skyspace. This is topped by a dry stone wall that fits into the landscape and the Skyspace room is hidden underneath it and through the back of the deer shelter space. The dry stone wall is there just to guard the hole in the ground that becomes your sky view when you enter the room and look up. I call this the most self-effacing sculpture in the landscape, as many fail to find it. At the same time it has the large concrete slabs that can’t help but raise the spectre of the sort of architecture that many people dislike. It manages to overcome this to be welcoming, reflective space all aimed at getting you to become still, look at the sky and listen to the sounds of the park. I recommend you try singing as well, as it is a good acoustic space. All in all a triumph of the cross between architecture, engineering and art.
This contrasts nicely with other dry stone wall structures in the park. Further over in the same field space than we tend to go is Andy Goldsworthy’s Sheep Fold, a working space that we are encouraged to enter, connecting us to the working of the landscape and the people and animals in it. Across the other side of the lake, at the top of the hill, there are two Goldsworthy dry stone wall enclosures that surround holes in the ground that we are encouraged to look down into, where we find suspended tree trunks built into the walls. Further round the top walk, on the way to the Longside Gallery, is another Goldsworthy wall that is too high to look into and has no entrance. In this way the wall is used to exclude us from viewing the space within. All these are examples of the way that the same dry stone wall materials can be used in different ways to create different effects in us, the viewers.
Our final stop on the tour is normally in the woods just below the visitor centre, where we return to the HaHa and Brian Fell’s HaHa bridge. The first point about this work is that there is an irony in having an ungated bridge across a HaHa that is meant to be a barrier. The next is that, like some of the works by Plensa, this sculpture incorporates text, which is an interesting mixed media choice. The final, important point raised by this work is that artists can be attempting to put before us all sorts of ideas, both serious and less so. Sometimes the ideas have not even been consciously formed by the artist. This sculpture raises the point that in art like anything else there is a role for humour.
The tour takes in only a few of the things on offer in the park and hope that you will continue to explore. I hope you have enjoyed the tour and that I have stimulated some thoughts and ideas of your own. Thank You.
