The final batch of pictures from my Yorkshire Sculpture Park visit. As previously, I’ve added a little information about the artworks below each picture, but you can find out more at the park’s website.
Sean Henry makes detailed and life-like sculptures of anonymous figures, often in casual poses and deep in thought. They are usually based on members of the public or actors, and scaled either up or down, so they are never actually life sized. Seated Figure is a monumental 3 metres tall. The artist uses clay to model his works in the studio, before they are cast in bronze. (taken from the YSP website)
This piece can be seen from miles and has a commanding position looking out across the landscape from the top of a hill.
Charity is based on the Scope charity collection boxes that used to be common on British streets. It features a young girl wearing a calliper and cradling a teddy bear. It has a donate box asking people to ‘please give generously’. Hirst’s interpretation questions outdated ways of depicting disability and seeking charity. (taken from the YSP website)
The charity boxes that inspired this piece were a common sight when I was younger, although not with the additional flourish added by Hirst, which features the collection box pried open by a crowbar. I was amused and happy to note that crows had taken up residence within the open collection box and were carrying nesting material in there as I watched.
Damien Hirst’s The Virgin Mother stands at 10 metres tall and is the tallest sculpture at YSP. A powerful presence in the landscape, it is partly inspired by the historic sculpture Little Dancer of Fourteen Years(c.1881), by Edgar Degas. Hirst deliberately makes the materials look different than they are, for example The Virgin Mother is bronze painted to look like plastic. (taken from the YSP website)
This is a striking piece of sculpture and my picture doesn’t really give a sense of scale, with a full grown adult barely reaching the figure’s calves. It’s also slightly disturbing with the figure appearing intact from her left profile, only to reveal tissues, muscles, bone, and a fetus in her womb. Where her left hand crosses the demarcation between outside and inside, the fingers are severed.
The colossal sculpture is impressive in both scale and composition, appearing very different from every angle and continuing the theme of points that almost meet, which appears in much of Moore’s work. (taken from the YSP website)
I’d originally intended to get the whole sculpture in frame when I took this shot, but I liked how the child gave a sense of scale to the piece, so moved the viewpoint.
Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Tmax 100 (expired 2008). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 for 7 minutes @ 20°
Taken on 5 April 2025
Steel City Snapper photography 