FARMERS will get a shock when they turn up for the Great Yorkshire Show next week.
Two huge structures have been moved from Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Bretton to the annual event in Harrogate.
Sophie Ryder’s Crawling and Igor Mitoraj’s Héros de Lumière were lowered on to the President’s Lawn at the Harrogate Showgrounds yesterday.
More than 13,000 visitors will have the chance to see the huge sculptures when the show gets under way on Tuesday.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park executive director Peter Murray said: “We are delighted to bring sculptures by two internationally acclaimed artists to the Great Yorkshire Show.
“We hope that visitors to the Great Yorkshire Show are inspired to visit the sculpture park.”
The Great Yorkshire Show’s honorary director Bill Cowling added: “We are absolutely delighted to showcase such impressive pieces of art and the setting is just perfect for them.
“Our two organisations are flagships of excellence, not just in Yorkshire but internationally and this trailblazing initiative celebrates that.
“We believe it is the first time that sculptures of this stature have been displayed at an agricultural show and I am sure they will cause great interest.”
The two 3.6m high works of art, which have a combined weight of 14 tonnes, were taken the 33 miles from West Bretton to Harrogate yesterday on a 16-metre long trailer.
They were lowered into place by a huge crane at 10.30am yesterday.
British sculptor Sophie Ryder’s Crawling, with the head of a hare and a human body, has been displayed at the park for the past three years.
Ryder created the piece in 1999 using a steel armature, around which she moulded and bent different thicknesses of wire. The finished bronze – which is 6.2m long and weighs five tonnes – was then dipped in boiling zinc to galvanise it.
Polish sculptor Igor Mitoraj’s ‘Héros de Lumière or ‘Hero of Light’ was created in 1986.
The nine-tonne piece of artwork was modelled in carrara marble following the style favoured by Renaissance sculptors such as Michelangelo.
