Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The sun was shining the day I visited the Yorkshire Sculpture park, no better weather could have been hoped for to view all of the extraordinary pieces of artwork presented around the never ending fields of grass and blooming trees. The way this open-air concept of a gallery had been presented to visitors for many years is extremely effective, I have never seen anything similar to this before so to be able to see this first hand was truly a one of a kind experience. I believe there is something for everyone within the Sculpture park as there are a number of indoor exhibitions, a well equipped cafe and acres of grounds to explore with sculptures dotted throughout. The artists whose work is presented within the sculpture park is highly contemporary, there is a large mixture of styles from artists such as Henry Moore, Barbra Hepworth (both local artists) and Giuseppe Penone. Penone's work took centre stage around the park, I frequently spotted pieces from his series called 'A Tree in the Wood', this was a series of realistic looking sculpted trees with inanimate objects within its branches. These objects were often made from a grey, concrete looking substance and took the form of blocks, balls and other objects. He also had an indoor exhibition that presented the bare, striped back version of a tree and their singular uses in nature.
One of my favourite pieces of art work from the sculpture park was a sculpture called 'sitting' by Sophie Ryder. This sculpture is made completely out of wire, it is of a sitting body in the form of a fully developed female with the head of a hare. There is a vertical division right through the centre of the sculpture facing sideways, this was due to Ryder's need for the viewers to be able to see this sculpture from all viewpoints. I found this extremely impressive due to the sheer size and detail applied to the piece, this made it extremely effective to the eye as it makes you wonder how such sculpture is put together in the first place. This piece was part of an unnamed series created by Sophie Ryder focusing on the form and heads of Hare's combined with the body of a woman.
Due to the parks enormous size I wasn't able to cover the whole grounds in the period of time we were there but from the grounds I did cover I was extremely impressed with the outcome. There was a high contrast of contemporary and modern art amongst some more traditional figure brass sculptures within the park.