Yorkshire Sculpture Park #3 - David Nash

The most prominent exhibits currently on display at YSP (until February anyway), are the works of David Nash. For those who aren’t familiar, Nash is a sculptor most commonly associated with the “land art” movement, made famous by Andy Goldsworthy. His best known work is probably “wooden boulder”, which is featured in this blog post from Pruned. Whilst I generally find the work of Andy Goldsworthy to be interesting in print (and he does a fine postcard), I’ve often found them to be rather insubstantial in person, if not rather disappointing. By contrast, Nash’s works are much more interesting viewed at first hand. They have a robust presence that is more obviously manmade, but also evocative of the natural elements that they are derived from.

As many of the exhibits requested that photographs weren’t taken, I’ve not posted many pictures. However, if you’d like to see more, the blog below has a more comprehensive range of photo’s:

http://gerryco23.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/david-nash-at-ysp/

Or better still, take a visit yourself!

Antony Gormley: 6 Times

In the far mists of time when I was studying for my art GSCE, a friend and classmate called Jude, made an amazing discovery. Following a suggestion from his Sister, Jude stuck cut-out newspaper headlines (stuff about war and pollution and Africa), around his slightly dodgy, 2B pencil and poster-paint representations of cow bones . What he hadn’t expected was the rapturous response he received from our Art Teacher, Mrs. Warwick, who thought this was the greatest artistical innovation, since middle-class Westerners discovered batik.

Following this success, Jude prepared an artist study, with of a painting of a desert and some droopy clocks(inspired by Salvador Dali), surrounded by newspaper headlines about scandal. He then went on to produce his major project, which featured a gouache seabed, with pencilled fish bones and aquatic skeletons, surrounded by headlines about, oh, oil being bad or something. For his piece de resistance, Jude’s final art exam... actually I can’t remember, but I’m dam sure it had bones and newspaper headlines.

I give this story, because it seems to me that Antony Gormley has followed a similar career path in the grown-up world of art, as my mate Jude did at Judgemeadow Community College. Only instead of bones and newspaper headlines, Gormley has figures. Also like Jude, Gormley seems to enjoy most success, when he sticks most closely to this formula (i.e. figures on Crosby Sands = good, random plinth in Trafalgar Square=bad).

While it may appear that I’m being snide about Antony Gormley’s work, it is with some affection. For me he’s like the Abba of the sculpture world; you know it’s cheesy, but you can’t help liking the Angel of the North (or SOS).

Hence I thought I’d share some recent Guardian photographs of ‘6 times’, Gormley’s new installation of 6 figures leading from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art to Edinburgh’s Leith Docks.

Inspiration - Charles Rennie Mackintosh Watercolours

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was one of my earliest inspirations as a designer, and I was pleased when I read that his design for Glasgow School of Art had been voted the "Stirling of Stirling's" (or best building of all the buildings voted best building):

http://www.hughpearman.com/2009/12.html

However, it seems to me that while his buildings are admired and people now have pencil cases and coffee mugs with his designs on (what is it with stained glass too?), his painting is overlooked. I absolutely love the watercolours he produced later in his life, so thought I should post a few on here.

Cycle Stands

Cycle stands are invariably pretty boring. The Sheffield stand (see above) is pretty universally used, and while there are other designs for cycle stands, they're not particularly exciting either. Hence, I was interested to see that David Byrne (yes, him out of the Talking Heads) has produced some arty, cycle stands to try and get people riiding their bikes in New York. I think they're pretty cool.



I like the way he's themed them according to where they are. Hence the dollar sign is on Wall Street, the shoe is on a shopping street and rather unsurprisingly, the coffee mug is outside a coffee shop. It's quite an interesting idea and has had me wondering how you could do something similar in the UK: Crown shaped stands outside Buckingham Palace. A pint glass outside a pub. A cycle stand shaped like a small child outside a school...

Northumberlandia

I was excited to see details of the latest work by Charles Jencks. ‘Northumberlandia’ - a giant sculpture in the form of a reclining woman, unsurprisingly located in Northumblerland and constructed from waste material arising from local mining operations.

I’ve been meaning to write about Jencks past work for some time, but had never quite got round to it. For the few that aren’t aware, Jencks is an architectural academic, writer of rather wordy, but interesting books and with his late wife Maggie, the creator of some extraordinary gardens. “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation” is his best known work, and in my opinion, it is one of the most astonishing works of art and design in the modern era. Below are images of Jencks recreation of the garden at the Scottish National Gallery.





I’m not sure they really do the garden justice (the design intent is rooted in some pretty mind-bending ideas of the universe), but hopefully they show how Jencks created a whole new design vocabulary, with chiselled and sculpted earth mounding.

Having been widely imitated, it’s interesting to see Jencks returning to earth shaping. For me this looks like a terrific project – taking something mundane and typically unattractive (how many restored mining landscapes really look good?!?) and turning it into something exciting, beautiful and unique. I’m really enthusiastic about works of art that become landmarks, so will look forward to seeing how this project works out. In the meantime I’m posting all the images of the project that I can readily put my hands on!