A Visit to YSP

Today was our return to college and, after the morning was spent doing presentations, we all went on a group trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park at Bretton.

The Park spans over a large piece of land and is surrounded by farm land which means crossing many sheep or cow filled fields and ensuring you close lots of gates. When we first arrived the group decided to split so I went exploring with Ben and Rich.

As we hadn’t passed anywhere to pick up a map we just set off to explore taking photos of statues as we went. The route we chose started off a bit sparse and we only came across a few statues before we had crossed the Dam Head Bridge.

Once we had crossed the bridge we noticed a sign for the Longside Gallery which we thought would be worth viewing. So we began along the ‘Route to Longside’. Unfortunately for us we hadn’t realised how long this would take and it ate up a lot of our time getting there. We did venture off track a few times as there were side tracks that were slightly misleading; however this was due to Rich’s internal compass rather than my own.

Even though I complained a lot along this long path we did come across two pieces that were hidden gems that we all thought were great. There was a sculpture at the beginning of the route which was an iron girder that had been twisted into the shape of a barrel. The second thing that we came across was Winter/Hölbelt – Basket #7.Oxley Bank, this was great as we could go inside it and look at the view across the whole park. The building was made up of sheets of metal that had square holes in so the wind would sweep through the building whilst you were inside. I felt this was one of the better sculptures as it was more of a physical experience.

Once we finally reached the Longside Gallery we notice it was home to an exhibition of work by Andy Goldworthy. If I am honest I didn’t like this exhibition as I couldn’t see what point was being made by the work. The pieces were a set that consisted of a piece of canvas or other material being placed on the ground with an spherical stone placed in the centre, it had then been trampled on by sheep leaving hoof marks left in mud and faeces. I was not a fan.

Also in this gallery though there were some interesting works produced by Tony Ziegler who had made large objects from card and paper. This was to explore the relationship between the computer generated and the handmade. This was my favourite work that we saw today.

In addition to this exhibition we saw more work by Andy Goldsworthy at the Underground Gallery. This was much more impressive work which was thought provoking; when we saw the Leaf Stalk Room we were all taken aback by it contemplating the amount of time that must have gone into producing it.

Overall it was a valuable experience visiting the park and the time flew by. I felt that the work we viewed in some cases was inspiring but in others I was a little confused by it but then I believe this is the nature of art to either love it or hate it. We have discussed as a group; is sculpture art? Personally I would say it is I think there are many grey areas between art and design but I feel that sculpture is a method or expressing a thought or feeling or provoking these in the audience which for me settles sculpture firmly in the side of art.