July 27, 2003
Yorshire Sculpture Park
Just down the road from us is the Yorkshire Sculpture Park They ban climbing on sculptures so it is not a place I would normally visit but being disabled, in the climbing sense, we made a visit.
Northern people are a talented lot Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and David Hockney could all be considered local. The countryside is pretty they filmed the League of Gentleman in our village and we passed Holmefirth on the way – “Last of the Summer Wine” countryside. I only moved to the area to be close to Gods own rock gritstone! The place is full of surprises. There was a lot of Barbara Hepworth’s work that I have decided I do not particularly like, Elizabeth Fink’s work that I did enjoy and the Molecular man I thought was stunning.
They have an interesting policy, which I like, free to enter and you have to walk even though the distances are large and they do not tell you where the individual pieces of work are. You have to go and find them, that I find refreshing in a world where people put cairns to help you walk around a lake.
They advertise it as 500 acres of historic landscape and international sculpture, looks a bit like Chatsworth Estate with sculptures every where. What surprised me was the lack of security. These sculptures are presumably valuable yet there appears to be no effort to keep the things there. Now I know security is an issue in the North of England. Only the other day someone drove up to our house in the middle of the night and put in the boot of their car, I am surmising here, an imitation stone trough with pansies in. Now I say a car drove up but you could hardly lift the thing. People take computers and projectors from schools why not valuable sculptures from parks?
I've always fancied going here - I guess you enjoyed despite not being able to climb on it. I can't quite work out picture but it looks fab.
I've just come back from visting here a few hours ago and it was stunning. It was a suprising clear day which made the sculptures stand out even more. On our way back from the coal mining musem we poped in yesterday and it was wet and slugy from the rain so today we took wellingtons. You have to try and plan to go on a good day. YSP encourages you to touch the sculptures but not to climb on them, i gess it is for health and saftey issues. I would look to go and and look at all the scultpures i didn't have time for!
Posted by: Sarah at February 18, 2004 02:40 PM