Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The thing about returning to an area that we have been to before is that we can now do the things that missed out on previously.

After a quick morning stop in Hebden Bridge we headed to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see, amongst other things, a new exhibition by Andy Goldsworthy. We were quite disappointed to have missed this last time, thinking that we would not have the opportunity again, funny world.

The YSP is huge, taking about 4 hours to do a complete circuit allowing time to appreciate the pieces. Scattered around the park are works by Henry Moore, James Turrel, Barbara Hepworth, Anthony Caro, Antony Gormley and of course Andy Goldsworth, which is what we really wanted to see.

The first part of the Goldsworth exhibition was inside, consisting of stacked oak, stone room, clay room, wood room, leaf stalk room and a very beautiful series of photographs showing the destruction of man-made walls by natural elements. In our minds, this is the Andy Goldsworthy that we are familiar with. The work was exquisitely constructed, with its simplistic beauty overwhelming. There were also a few very good external pieces, consisting of perfect dry-stone walls and suspended tress that were also very good.

The gallery at the other end of the park contained a series of Goldsworth painting, which we felt were not as strong as his other work. The work consisted of a cow dung mural, sheep feeding patterns, sheep-shit paintings and a series of blood drawings that were created by stuffing the carcass of a dead hare with snow, allowing the melted snow and blood to drip onto a canvas. We were not alone in our lack of appreciation for these pieces, with many patrons raising eyebrows and biting their lips. I guess in the end art is art, and you either like it or you don't.

As far as sculpture parks go the YSP is good, but its vast grounds and very light scattering of pieces made you feel a little disappointed. As the park has been running for 30 years, most pieces have come and go, but you can't help think that they could have easily kept a lot of the early work on site and still had plenty of room to spare. We felt that the Grizedale Sculpture park in the Lake District was a much better park, even in the pouring rain. The intimacy that it offered by seeing pieces within a dense and varying forest, was a much more honest experience compared to seeing art alone in fields.