More monumental works onshow at sculpture park

Mar 21 2008 by Sarah Bull, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

More monumental works onshow at sculpture park

WHAT would be a substantial and appropriate follow up to Andy Goldsworthy’s exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the biggest and most popular show ever staged there?

Well, the park authorities seem to have fund the right answer in the person and work of Nigel Hall, a London sculptor with a prolific output.

This is Hall’s biggest show so far, with monumental pieces as you approach the car park and in front of the Underground Gallery, which is full of a rich variety of the sculptor’s output.

“This is a show with as much power and importance as Andy Goldsworthy’s” said Andy Carver, executive director of Arts Council England, who opened the exhibition and announced the good news that YSP would see its grant increased from £1m to £1,350,000 this year.

“The sculpture park is something we are very proud of,” he said. “The park works with major artists to create an international profile.

“You can see the inspiration of landscape in Nigel Hall’s work. It is fitting that his biggest show ever should be in this setting.”

The sculptor has refined a practice over 40 years that is concerned with occupying space, light and shadow.

In the Underground Gallery elegant sculptures in polished wood, like Hidden Valley and Winterreise, are complemented by many drawings, some in charcoal and some in black and yellow. They are some of 1,500 drawings made over 30 years.

“They are not preliminary studies for sculpture, but related explorations freed from any of the laws of physics that a sculptor must make,” Hall says. “They are close to my heart and stand as works in their own right.”

Hall was born in 1943 in Bristol and studied at the West of England College of Art and the Royal College. His sculpture became increasingly abstracted after a visit to the Mojave Desert in America in 1967.

The experience of space and silence had a profound effect on him. His minimalistic piece Soda Lake (in the Underground Gallery) came as a direct result.

He says: “The scale was vast and the place has sparse features, so sparse they only served as minimal markers, an occasional rock, plant or telegraph pole in an otherwise empty landscape.”

The two monumental pieces on view at Bretton, which no-one can miss, are titles Crossing (Vertical) which is 10 metres high and Crossing (Horizontal) which is 10 metres wide.

But most visitors will want to make a full exploration of this show, which also includes some delightful maquettes, in a wide range of media and colours.

“Al the works in the exhibition share a sense of poetry and above all, a sense of order and calm”, says deputy curator Helen Pheby.

The show runs till June 8.