Poppies and Goldsworthy and llamas, oh my!
Jul. 8th, 2007 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe spent the last full day of our holiday at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I took pictures: many, many pictures, which I think removes the need for a comprehensive account in words. Generally, then:
The Park is the land attached to an eighteenth century estate: the house (Bretton Hall) is still within the grounds, though not part of the Park, and gardens, a decorative lake, parkland and associated farmland spread out around it. Onto this Yorkshire landscape superimpose a generous scattering of sculptures, and a handful of small galleries. So a Henry Moore figure reclines in front of a view blazing with poppies, a James Turrell Skyspace is installed in an old deer shelter, Barbara Hepworth's Family of Man cluster on the lawn, there is a llama farm on the way to the Longside Gallery. Andy Goldsworthy was artist in residence here twenty years ago, and has returned to celebrate the Park's thirtieth birthday with a major exhibition, both in the park and in the galleries - and that's why I was keen to visit this year.
The best things - among so many best things: the Underground Gallery (not actually underground, but built back into the hillside) has been divided into four rooms, of which one contains stone (eleven low domes cover the floor, looking, as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler pointed out, as Skara Brae might have looked to an excavator), one mud clay (plastered smoothly onto the walls and allowed to dry to a crazed pattern), one wood (logs piled into a stable structure, so that standing in the room was like being in a great inverted nest; I cannot describe how good this felt) and one a screen of leaf stalks held together with blackthorns, a great lacy curtain spanning the room. At the far end of the park, Hanging Trees takes trees which had been felled in the course of woodland management work and builds them into stone enclosures within the boundary wall, playing with ideas of inside and outside, responding to the haha which is itself a trompe l'oeil boundary for the estate.
These reminded me of his sheepfolds: and since the sculpture park shares its lands with tenant farmers, it's only right that Andy Goldsworthy should have built a sheepfold here. Shadow Stone Fold contains a large flat stone on which, in February of this year, the sculptor lay in the first snowfall of the year, rising carefully so that his silhouette in the snow could be photographed. Now the public are invited to lie in the same place to make their own rain, snow or frost shadows, to document their creation with a digital photo and leave a copy for a future work. We didn't have the chance to try this, however, because on the day of our visit, the sheepfold was in use: the sheep were being gathered in for shearing:
The Park is the land attached to an eighteenth century estate: the house (Bretton Hall) is still within the grounds, though not part of the Park, and gardens, a decorative lake, parkland and associated farmland spread out around it. Onto this Yorkshire landscape superimpose a generous scattering of sculptures, and a handful of small galleries. So a Henry Moore figure reclines in front of a view blazing with poppies, a James Turrell Skyspace is installed in an old deer shelter, Barbara Hepworth's Family of Man cluster on the lawn, there is a llama farm on the way to the Longside Gallery. Andy Goldsworthy was artist in residence here twenty years ago, and has returned to celebrate the Park's thirtieth birthday with a major exhibition, both in the park and in the galleries - and that's why I was keen to visit this year.
The best things - among so many best things: the Underground Gallery (not actually underground, but built back into the hillside) has been divided into four rooms, of which one contains stone (eleven low domes cover the floor, looking, as durham_rambler pointed out, as Skara Brae might have looked to an excavator), one mud clay (plastered smoothly onto the walls and allowed to dry to a crazed pattern), one wood (logs piled into a stable structure, so that standing in the room was like being in a great inverted nest; I cannot describe how good this felt) and one a screen of leaf stalks held together with blackthorns, a great lacy curtain spanning the room. At the far end of the park, Hanging Trees takes trees which had been felled in the course of woodland management work and builds them into stone enclosures within the boundary wall, playing with ideas of inside and outside, responding to the haha which is itself a trompe l'oeil boundary for the estate.These reminded me of his sheepfolds: and since the sculpture park shares its lands with tenant farmers, it's only right that Andy Goldsworthy should have built a sheepfold here. Shadow Stone Fold contains a large flat stone on which, in February of this year, the sculptor lay in the first snowfall of the year, rising carefully so that his silhouette in the snow could be photographed. Now the public are invited to lie in the same place to make their own rain, snow or frost shadows, to document their creation with a digital photo and leave a copy for a future work. We didn't have the chance to try this, however, because on the day of our visit, the sheepfold was in use: the sheep were being gathered in for shearing:
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Date: 2007-07-08 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-09 04:51 am (UTC)Did I tell you I got to see Goldsworthy's Wall at Storm King?
Nine
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Date: 2007-07-09 05:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-09 09:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-09 09:45 am (UTC)