Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Peter Randall-Page

Me and Chikae went to visit Yorkshire Sculpture Park a couple of weeks ago. It was freezing cold and we were walking round in the mud - it was a really different to your usual gallery experience! I found that you really appreciated the work as the grounds were so large that you could walk around for hours seeing a piece of sculpture in the distance and try and locate it. It was really quiet when we went, only a handful of other people there so it did make the space seem a bit too big for the amount of works that were there. This was one issue that I felt let the sculpture park down, as an art venue it is not ideal as all the work seems lost in the grandeur of the grounds, it is obviously more tailored to a family day out. There were a couple of galleries within the grounds that were very interesting. One was the 'Underground gallery' underneath a large grass bunker with a long corridor with about 5 or 6 large rooms off from it. This was where they had one of the featured artist's work, Peter Randall-Page, a mixture of his sketches and tester pieces, and then some of his final huge sculptures. We noticed that in Gallery One it was noticeably darker than in the other rooms, the lighting was very soft and lit the sculptures very gently so that they did not appear to be so dominating. I found it very interesting to have a room at the end of the gallery, 'The Project Space,' where all of his sketch books, drawings, and maquettes were available to see. I really loved this as it meant that you got more of an insight into the process that the artist went through to get his final pieces. With works such as sculpture it is often difficult to guess the process behind the piece. It can be especially difficult as most metals and clays can be altered and painted so that they have any effect desired, and you are often not allowed to touch the sculpture to give you any clues about material. There was a huge difference between viewing the sculptures outside in the vast grounds, and having this intimate relationship with the piece in a relatively small room. The pieces seemed much more abstract when they were just placed in the centre of a room, like an alien life form that you could walk around and be intrigued by. When the pieces were out in the fields around you could see them from miles away, you are almost drawn towards them to try and work out what it is you can see.

Using the natural surroundings can be very difficult to do, there were a couple of pieces that we saw that just didn't seem to work such as the piece below by Paolozzi - they reminded me of 'plop art' and I felt they were really out of place in the site and didn't seem to have worked with the site itself. There was one piece that seemed like a giant umbrella, blown inside out, with various random objects stuck to the ends of the spires, that was awful. It didn't add to the surroundings, it didn't work, and it looked very out of place next to the other pieces - unfortunately I can't find a picture of it! When we set up our own exhibition this is something that each person will have to consider carefully, ideally each person should choose their site in response to their pieces, however we have to make our pieces work in the space that we have available. Prior to visiting the park I did not realise the importance of this, and thought that it would just look right once it was in a gallery setting, but now I realise that I have to think about my work in this way.


Paolozzi


There were some pieces that worked really well with the juxtaposition of their work and the grounds, such as Shaun Pickard's 'Unnatural' (below), a series of illuminated signs attatched to the trees. These pieces would have been great to see at night time, they had a photograph in the gift shop and you could really see the depth there was to the piece. Lighting is extremely important when showing your work, especially when it is a piece that involves light in the artwork itself.


Shaun Pickard