YORKSHIRE SCULPTURE PARK

Next Tuesday I am taking a trip over to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see an exhibition by David Nash before I hopefully go over to Wales to interview him.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park presents a rich and extensive exhibition of work by David Nash, tracing the evolution of the artist's forty-year career and offering a vivid statement of his life's work. Sculpture, installation and drawings range across the Park and include new monumental works for the Underground Gallery, a retrospective survey in Longside Gallery and contextual displays from the artist's archive alongside sculpture in the open air and a permanent outdoor commission. This is envisaged to be the largest exhibition by the internationally acclaimed artist who has developed an eloquent understanding of trees, working with their traits to create sculpture, installation, projects and related drawings.

The Underground Gallery features imposing new works, including huge redwood crags and large black eucalyptus spheres. The expansive Longside Gallery presents a survey of retrospective work from the artist's and international collections. The Bothy Gallery illustrates one of the artist's most celebrated projects, Wooden Boulder, a large piece of 200 year-old oak released into a stream in the Welsh mountains in 1978, whose journey is documented through drawing, film and photography. The Garden Gallery shows works from the artist's archive, which explore the development of his practice.

The exhibition documents a specially commissioned artist film by Pete Telfer, edited alongside archive footage, presenting a fascinating insight into the artist and his practice.

David Nash has very generously created a number of limited editions, exclusively for this exhibition, with all proceeds going to YSP. They include pastel stencil drawings and bronze casts, available to purchase from the Garden Gallery shop.

I have already posted some information on this blog earlier but some more examples of his work can be seen below...

DAVID NASH

David Nash was born in Esher in 1945. He studied at Kingston College of Art (1963-64), Brighton College of Art (1964-67) and Chelsea School of Art (1969-70). On leaving Chelsea, Nash moved to Blaenau Ffestiniog in North Wales, purchasing a chapel which has remained since then both his studio and home. Working away from London allowed Nash the intellectual and physical space to develop his art. He not only carves wood, largely from fallen trees, with chain and milling saws - skills that he has perfected over the years - but he also creates sculptures from growing plants, cutting and training them into domes or ladders. His famous Ash Dome, planted as saplings in 1977, is now a mature dome centred on a plot of woodland in North Wales, Nash's 'laboratory' for growing works and a place for thinking.

Many of David Nash's exhibitions - he has had hundreds of solo and group exhibitions throughout the world - are formed from work he has made in the general location of the museum or art gallery, with local wood. Significant shows of this type have been held in America, Japan and Poland. Nash's sculptures, made from unseasoned wood, alter after his intervention, cracking and twisting as they dry. In harnessing not only the element of air, but also fire and water, Nash changes the form and surface of his sculptures. His first charred works were made in Japan in the early 1980s. The process is almost as ritualistic as it is intense. Charring changes the surface to carbon, which, when treated with preservative and linseed oil, gives the sculptures a longer life in the open air.

In 1999 David Nash embarked on making some works in bronze, using earth and fire in the process. The resulting sculptures, with their patina resonant of smoke and ash, hold echoes of his works in wood. Nash continues to work in Blaenau Ffestiniog and in many places around the world. In 1999 he was elected Royal Academician.