Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019, Leeds and Wakefield
Spanning four key art venues in Yorkshire – Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Art Gallery, The Hepworth Wakefield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park – the inaugural edition of this free, 100-day festival features work by 18 artists from 13 different countries and is the UK’s largest ever dedicated sculpture festival.
Exploring ‘what it means to create sculpture today’, the works respond to a statement by the British sculptor Phyllida Barlow, the festival’s ‘provocateur’: “Sculpture is the most anthropological of art forms.”
The festival dominates the programming of all four of its venues with a stellar cast of international artists. The Hepworth includes a major new installation from German artist Wolfgang Laib as well as works by Nairy Baghramian, Jimmie Durham and Tau Lewis.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park features over 40 sculptures by American artist David Smith (1906-1965), charting four decades of work, as well as works by Damien Hirst and others.
In Leeds the Henry Moore Institute exhibits five artists, including an installation of sculptures made entirely from shea butter by Chicago’s Rashid Johnson. The neighbouring Leeds Art Gallery is showing work by Nobuko Tsuchiya, Rachel Harrison, Joanna Piotrowska, more from Hirst and an installation in the Central Court Gallery by Turkish sculptor Ayşe Erkmen.
There are also new public realm commissions including Pakistani-American artist Huma Bhabha’s sculpture outside County Hall in Wakefield city centre. In addition there is also a fringe festival, Index, running concurrently and offering a broader sense of the contemporary art scene in Leeds and Wakefield.
Until 29 September 2019. yorkshire-sculpture.org
This Land is Our Land, Paper Gallery, Manchester
Inspired by an artists’ walk that retraced a famous 1932 mass trespass by ramblers to the summit of Kinder Scout in the Peak District – and which took place on 29 March 2019, the date the UK was scheduled to leave the EU – ‘This Land is Our Land’ brings together work by 17 artists. Exploring ‘the meaning of place and myth in the act of pilgrimage’, the works create a compelling conversation through various mediums including photography and performance, drawing and sculpture. The artists are: Layla Curtis and John Angus, Oliver East, David Kefford, Sarah Evans, Calum F Kerr, Joe Hancock, Dale Holmes, Sabine Kussmaul, Jane Lawson, Reece Jones, David Lister, Katy Suggitt, Jill Townsley, Stephen Walter, Lisa Wilkens and Simon Woolham.
Until 3 August 2019. paper-gallery.co.uk
London-based artist and writer Morgan Quaintance transforms David Dale Gallery for his first solo exhibition in Scotland, part of a series of three shows which have taken place at Lux in London and Karst in Plymouth. ‘Hysteresis’ is an installation of three films, each one dealing with how past events have either impacted or ‘been occluded from the UK’s artistic and socio-cultural present’. The films include Anne, Richard and Paul (2018), a portrait of the experimental music of Bow Gamelan Ensemble, and Early Years (2019), which explores one woman’s first generation diasporic experience in Britain. Also featured are wall-based works and an interview that relates to a film currently in production, Batakhalou Dakar.
Until 27 July 2019. www.daviddalegallery.co.uk
My Kind of Protest, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London
This exhibition features paintings by three artists spanning different generations who create ‘psychologically-charged portraits addressing what it means to be a black woman in a society ruled by men’. From recent work by Kenyan artist Chemu Ng’ok (born 1989) to painting from 60 years ago by American artist Vivian Browne (1929-1993), and works by Emma Amos (born 1937) dating from the 1980s and 1990s, this vibrant and engaging show is both historically intriguing and powerfully contemporary. Its title is taken from a 1985 interview Amos conducted with Browne, in which the latter said: “I was painting my kind of protest, but it didn’t look like black art. […] Now they’re saying, is there a women’s art?”
Until 2 August 2019. www.houldsworth.co.uk
1. David Smith, Untitled (Candida), 1965, © 2019 The Estate of David Smith, Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Courtesy YSP
Photo: © Jonty Wilde
2. Ayşe Erkmen, three of four, 2019. Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones
3. Wolfgang Laib, Installation view, part of Yorkshire Sculpture International at The Hepworth Wakefield. Photo: Nick Singleton; Courtesy: the artist and The Hepworth Wakefield
4. ‘This Land is Our Land’, installation view, 2019, Paper Gallery, Manchester. Courtesy: Paper Gallery
5. Morgan Quaintance: Hysterisis, installation view, David Dale Gallery, Glasgow. Photo: Max Slaven
6. Emma Amos, Blindfolds, 1993, acrylic on canvas with African fabric border and photo transfer, 200.7 x 283.5 cm, 79 x 111.6 in
H9748. © Emma Amos/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; courtesy the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London
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Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2019: winning work praised for its “new sculptural vision”
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