Yorkshire Sculpture Tour, England – Part 1

31 May 2014

Of course on the day I decided to go to a sculpture park, the rain also decided to not stop and was invading Yorkshire for the day. It didn’t however stop me from enjoying my trip.

The sculpture park was AMAZING. Once I braved the rain, I managed to see parts of the park. Like my friend used to say “It is only raining water, if it is stones than you should be afraid” , I put on my rain jacket, umbrella and welly boots, went straight in the rain. Sculpture seems to be popping out from the ground everywhere. Some are beautiful, some are weird, creepy and quite a few are very cool.

This trip was wholy entirely because I want to see the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, just outside Wakefield. I have known about the park for some time, but it always seems to be too much of a trek to go there. Only this year they are the finalist of The Best Museum of The Year, along side with Tate Britain and Hayward Gallery, that I thought “It must be pretty good and different, to get that, as it is a long weekend, I will put the effort in”

Got there using the train to Wakefield and took a bus that goes straight in the park. Oh by the way google maps of the UK now provides bus number and times, so useful. I must have looked confused as people in the bus kept giving me hinters, and they were all so nice, a lady even offer to press the stop button for me. Got out of the bus went in to the centre, when I was browsing their reception counter for a map a gentleman, who doesn’t seem to be working there, asked whether this my first time in the park, I said yes. He gave me a 15 minutes overview of the site with the map, telling me which are the best bits of the site and parts that I can still enjoy without being wet. People are just soo friendly in Yorkshire.

Inside the first building was works by German-American Sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard, the work is very cool. She uses a lot wood, to make the structures and contours.

 

 

Ursula’s work outside, I this one was transported from central park New York.

Other sculptures outside, the ones I can take without putting my camera in the rain.

at first I thought these are real haybales, but it is not its a sculpture Invasion – instalation by Michael Zwingmann

I love this weird sculpture.

Very fun an whimsical park.For better pictures of the sculpture visit their beautiful website here.

For me the piece de resistance was Roger Hiorns: Seizure. A disused flat from London which was filled with copper sulphate, left a couple weeks to reveal a flat full of blue crystal. It is amazing! The flat was about to be flatten, before the artist did this. Because it got so famous, they made a concrete structure to keep the flat and transported over to Yorkshire.This is the only part of the park you can’t take pictures of, it only opens during the weekend, they say that the piece will only last about 10 years before it disolves. This image is from YSP website.

At the end I got to see in their newly refurbished chappel, with a small Ai Wei Wei exhibition. Outside the chappel a massive work by Ai Wei Wei called Iron tree, a tree made out of metal but because it rusted it looks like a red tree. I had to touch it to ensure that it is not actually made of wood. 🙂

I didn’t manage to see everything but made a promise to return.

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park is free to enter, the bus was £4.60 all day bus pass. For more information here is their website.

Next Sculptour – Hepworth Wakefield Gallery

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