Yorkshire Sculpture Park - Peter Randall Page and Rob Ryan

I recently had a trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture park and had a look at the Peter Randall-Page exhibition in the underground gallery. I was looking at his pieces with more depth and thought about the process more than I usually do at these sorts of places.

I thought it was interesting about how these pieces that are stuck on the wall are attached with velcro. At first this seemed like a perfectly good way of attaching it, its practical in terms of moving the exhibition about and it seemed to be holding up pretty well. Then I spoke to one of the gallery assistants who told me that they keep falling off and having to be re-installed which I can imagine becoming annoying considering how long that exhibition is due to stay there.

I was fascinated with the texture of these plaster sculptures, it inspired me to think bigger about the kind of thing that me and Ruth are working on and consider the texture of the piece more. I like how it is sat on the floor, no need for a plinth, almost like an obstacle or an intrusion in the space.

In another room there were tables full of maquettes and sketchbooks with all the information that helped the artist to scale up his pieces. The gallery assistant told me that Peter Randall-Page puts pins into his maquettes and then measures between each pin and multiplys that amount by however much bigger he wants to make it. I thought this was really useful to know because it could help us.

I then took a look at the Rob Ryan exhibition that was on. He makes delicate cut-out pieces of cute little scenes often with text about romance or comments on life. His work did not seem like that of a male's, it has a feeling of femininity about it, in a sensitive and delicate sense.

Lanzarote and César Manrique

During reading week I went to Lanzarote, mostly for a wedding but I also got chance to have a wander around. In one of my favourite parts of Lanzarote there is a new sculpture put up. These huge pieces of wood have been taken from a Greek Merchant Shipwreck nearby in the harbour of Arrecife which has been there ever since 1980. The paint on the pieces of wood highlight the main parts of damage from when it became wrecked.

I find it interesting how a lot of sculpture in Lanzarote is situated on roundabouts. It is ideal because it means that people cannot really get to touch the sculptures to damage them and it forces people to notice them.

A lot of the sculptures on the island are by César Manrique. He was born in Lanzarote and after receiving a large grant he set up a studio in New York and moved there to persue his career however he began to feel nostalgia for Lanzarote.

"(...) more than ever I feel true nostalgia for the real meaning of things. For the pureness of the people. For the bareness of my landscape, and for my friends (...) My last conclusion is that man in N.Y. is like a rat. Man was not created for this artificiality. There is an imperative need to go back to the soil. Feel it, smell it. That's what I feel."

" When I returned from New York, I came with the intention of turning my native island into one of the more beautiful places in the planet, due to the endless possibilities that Lanzarote had to offer. ".

Manrique had a major influence on the planning regulations in lanzarote, when he recognised its tourist potential and successfully encouraged sympathetic development of tourism. One part of this is the lack of high rise hotels on the island. The ones that are there are in keeping with the use of traditional colours in their exterior decoration.

Interestingly Manrique didn't drink, didn't smoke and didn't allow others to smoke next to him, he regularly went to bed very early and got up at dawn, and began work in his studio very early.
He died at the age of 73 in a tragic car accident, near a roundabout with his own sculpture on. Poor bugger.

Leeds Art Walk - February

I've been meaning to post this for a few weeks about the Leeds art walk that I went on sometime back in February.


Stanley Burton Aubrey Gallery

We started the walk at the gallery in Leeds University; there was a short talk about some work that was on show by Wilhelmina Barns Graham. She does a lot of work on landscapes mostly set in St Ives.
I like that a lot of her work is colourless, it forces you to focus on the shapes and forms of the work. She studies the shapes of nature looking at lines and contours.


She also paints views of Lanzarote which is somewhere that is particularly familiar to me considering the many times I visit the place each year. It's not somewhere that I think is beautiful or picturesque but I can understand why Wilhelmina would paint this place due to the amazing shapes of the deserts and volcanic spaces that she seems to take interest in.

I quite enjoyed seeing her work but the talk was quite boring. It was set out well as an exhibition because the curator Dave Louis had put her work into sections depending on when they were done and the different styles as her work progresses.


Leeds Art Gallery

We also went to the art gallery to see the northern art prize. To be honest I wasn’t particularly blown away by any of it, the one thing that I did enjoy was ‘these are the days’ 2008-9 by Matt Stokes which was a film of a band playing and was shown in a large room projected onto one of the walls. It had a really good atmosphere but when you stand alone in the room, it really doesn’t work; you need to have a crowd stood there to get into the gig atmosphere.

There was also an animation that I enjoyed called ‘The Four Horsemen – War’ 2009 by Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson which was different flowers mutating into different shapes to form depictions of insects.


It was shown on four screens set within a white cube in the room containing lots of old paintings. The cube blocks the light to the paintings and looks an eye-sore in that room; it really doesn’t fit. The animation inside is great but the cube that it is set in needs to be moved to another room that is more appropriate.


The Howard Assembly Room

We then moved onto the Howard Assembly room to the opening night of Janet Cardiff’s “The Forty Part Motet”. This was a fantastic opportunity to see the sorts of people who are part of the art world in Leeds.
The piece was of 40 loud speakers mounted on stands placed in an oval with each voice of a choir playing from each stand. If you stood in the middle you could hear the choir as a whole.

The room suited the work because it reminded me of a church, the roof was rounded which helped make the sound bounce around enhancing the piece. The lighting in the room helps to set a relaxed atmosphere. The ceiling was lit and there were soft lights around the room.

It was interesting to note how the piece had been put together with the wires on show but tidied away around the edges leading to a computer which controls each speaker. I was concerned about tripping over the stands but it would be difficult to change that without making it so that you can’t go near the speakers, which is the whole point.








It was very noisy the night while I was there due to the fact that it was an opening, so I would like to return when it is much quieter. I was imagining the piece if I was in the dark, I was thinking about how it would be nice for there to be spotlights above each speaker and when someone is singing on that speaker it lights up.

There was a nice image as a woman who was listening to the piece rested her head on one of the speakers, shut her eyes and smiled, it kind of summed up the atmosphere and was probably the sort of reaction that the artist had hoped for.