Road Trip I - Yorkshire Sculpture Park – 27/28 July

What an enchanted, magical and mellow place this is. The park covers a huge area (500 acres) of fields, agricultural land, meadows, woodland, streams and rivers, as well as four separate gallery spaces and a plush modern visitor’s centre.

Outdoors, selections from the Park’s collection are dotted all around.


Because the sculptures are often changed, there isn’t a guide as such, just some suggested walks, and many of the sculptures don’t have anything to tell you who they are by. This could be annoying, but somehow isn’t, as it allows you to wander freely and make your own discoveries and judgements. So some magnificent humanoid forms sit in the middle of a field of sheep, whilst a row of clucking birds lead us to a wonderful Henry Moore figure...

As we get lost in the forest, nothing seemed to make sense any more. Some of the artists play with the question of what sculpture is, incorporating elements of the rural surroundings. We stumble on an arch of arranged twigs – considered work, or a children’s project? A treehouse rests on a large tree into which a poem has been carved; from a distance it looks random, like graffiti or vandalism, only close up does it reveal itself. That sheep pen over there – is it for the sheep or is it an installation? – it looks like it is a working pen save for a sign pointing to the public entrance. In an old deer shelter James Turrell has made one of his skyspaces – a square hole in the ceiling – you sit and look at a square of sky – the drama of cloud sun and sky focussed and quickened by being framed.