YORKSHIRE SCULPTURE PARK and JAUME PLENSA

Yorkshire Sculpture Park is well-titled - it is a sculpture park in Yorkshire. It is close to Wakefield and is a wonderful place to visit again and again at different seasons of the year. Much more information is available on its website.

The park hosts a permanent collection of sculptures including the largest collection of Henry Moores in Europe.

Henry Moore - Large Two Forms, 1966

In 2011 the YSP is hosting a wonderful exhibition of works by the Catalan sculptor Jaume Plensa, whose work can also be seen on this site via the pages dedicated to Chatsworth and Nice. The pictures below are from this exhibition.

Poster advertising the exhibition - copyright Yorkshire Sculpture Park; reproduced here with their permission. The poster depicts Dialogue, 2009. Polyester resin, stainless steel, light and marble pebbles. Dimensions variable. Collection: Copperhill Mountain Lodge, Åre, Sweden / Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York. Photo: Jonas Kullman.

Heart of Trees

Heart of Trees, with Yorkshire Soul I, II and III in the background.

Yorkshire Soul I, II and III

Spiegel. One of a pair of figures, composed of characters from Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Hindi and Latin alphabets, facing each other. Spiegel is German for mirror.

One of two steel mesh heads entitled Nuria and Irma.

Twenty nine palms. A curtain of letters, forming extracts of poems, reading vertically.

Twenty nine palms. See above.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. One of three internally illuminated fibreglass figures.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. See above.

In the midst of dreams. One of three internally illuminated heads, set on a blanket of marble pebbles. The words embossed on to faces are taken from Oscar Wilde's poem written whilst in Reading Gaol.

In the midst of dreams. See above.

Alabasta Heads. Alabasta carvings, modelled on photographs of girls' heads, vertically distorted as computer images.

Alabasta Heads. See above.

Archetectural model of sculpted figures on plinths. Presumably a working model for figures such as those installed in the Place Masséna, Nice; see Nice page on this site. The reflections are in the perspex enclosure of the model.

Archetectural model of sculpted figures on plinths. See above.

Archetectural model of sunshades.

These pictures do not do justice to the genius of Jaume Plensa, nor to the skill of those responsible for establishing the exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. If you have not visited this exhibition, you have missed something quite wonderful.

Plensa is also represented in the north of England by Dream, a 20 metre head of a sleeping woman, constructed on the site of the old slag heap of the Sutton Manor Colliery, one of the largest pits in Lancashire until its closure in 1991. Three images of Dream are shown below. The aircraft is courtesy of John Lennon Airport.