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Rich Jevons tell us what not to miss this season

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After over a decade of covering the visual and performing arts in Yorkshire I never fail to be excited by the start of a New Year, planning out a calendar of new shows and researching the forthcoming array of the tasty morsels on offer. This year may prove to be one of the finest yet with a dazzling display in all areas: sculpture, photography, painting, installation and illustration.

The sculpture includes a major exhibition of Henry Moore’s sculpture, carvings, bronzes and drawings at Leeds Art Gallery and prints and portfolios at Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. The LAG show is fresh from a critically acclaimed run at Tate Britain and alongside HMI’s look at Moore’s graphic output allows an unprecedented opportunity to assess the masterful work of one of the finest artists Yorkshire has produced.

Back in 1961, Lord Harewood was artistic director at the Edinburgh Festival that included a retrospective of sculpture by Sir Jacob Epstein. Some 50 years later the Finding Adam show at Harewood House includes works from the Harewood collection alongside loans from New Art Gallery, Walsall and private collections. A rare chance to assess the impact Epstein had on modern British sculpture including both Moore and Hepworth.

Almost uncannily, this coincides with the eagerly anticipated opening of the Hepworth Wakefield that combines some forty sculptures by Barbara Hepworth alongside her contemporaries including Ben Nicholson, Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash, Patrick Heron, and international artists such as Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti.

Not to be outdone, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park presents the first major UK exhibition of sculpture and drawings by Jaume Plensa displayed in YSP’s Underground Gallery and the surrounding landscape. I’m particularly looking forward to banging a gong in Jerusalem – a circle of 11 gongs engraved with text from Song of Songs, certainly the most erotic text in the Bible (okay, let’s forget the Whore of Babylon in Revelations!).

The Henry Moore Institute programme offers even more sculptural goodies with a show by Jean-Marc Bustamante that continues HMI’s examination of the relationship between two and three-dimensional art. This is followed in the fall by United Enemies which, as the title implies, explores the similarities of approach implicit in seemingly contrasting sculptors of 60s and 70s Britain.

Depending when you read this you may also have an opportunity to take in the Glenys Barton show at Cartwright Hall, Bradford. Barton focuses on the human form using experiments with smoked surfaces and crackled glazes and the colour and patination of bronze to represent her subjects.

Our constant search for the illusory appeal of youthful beauty is the subject of photographer Zed Nelson’s exhibition at Impressions Gallery, Bradford. Nelson spent a period of five years visiting 18 countries to photograph those in search of the Western ideal of beauty, be it Iranians queuing for nose jobs in Tehran or female staff at a Russian nuclear agency competing for the title of Miss Atom (perhaps with the added appeal that she may glow in dark!).

Contrasting to such earthly delights is David Spero’s show at the nearby National Media Museum. Spero has photographed houses, garages, cinemas, commercial properties, industrial estates and shopping parades that have been used as places of worship. As well as emphasising the sense of community that such venues provide, it also hints at the fact that God is everywhere, not in the confines of high church paradings of “sacredness”.

Once the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, re-opens from refurbishment it holds the first major exhibition in over 30 years devoted to Victorian artist John Atksinson Grimshaw. As the title, Painter of Moonlight implies, the show includes some of Grimshaw’s exquisite nightscapes as well as his early pre-Raphaelite paintings of the 1860s. It may be a tad out of fashion for the painting-is-dead school but will no doubt be Yorkshire’s most popular painting exhibition of the year.

For a more modernist palette you can explore the thickly applied landscapes of George Rowlett at Dean Clough Galleries, Halifax (to be confirmed) and the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery – the University of Leeds’ presentation of Expressionist Catalan painter, Carlos Nadal.

In terms of installation it is required reading to visit the Project Space Leeds show by Dutton and Swindells. The Stag and Hound is the latest part of their Institute of Beasts projects, deliberately titled to sound like a public house as it is their intention to adopt the gallery as a ‘space of potential conviviality but also of unexpected encounters’: I guess a kind of artist community.

Meanwhile, back at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Rebecca Chesney’s installation is an experimental laboratory mapping the landscape of the sumptuous Bretton Estate. It’s good to know that her “extensive landscape intervention” is bee-friendly!

Finally, in the more traditional medium of illustration, the Dorothy Bradford retrospective at the Manor House Museum and Art Gallery, Ilkley, captures musicians, dancers, horses and riders, birds and groups of people. And if you haven’t already found out the Beardsley show at Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, a trip to the University is a must (last chance, it ends on 12^th February). Then, last but not least, Yorkshire Craft Centre, Bradford, offers a special collaboration between lecturer Ian Taylor and artist-musician Brendan Croker which they describe as a ‘framed event’. More in the frame soon to come, for now go forth and artify!

Henry Moore @ Leeds Art Gallery, 4^th March to 12^thwww.leeds.gov.uk/artgallery/ June

Henry Moore Prints and Portfolios @ Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 3^rd February to 3^rd April www.henry-moore.org/hmi

Finding Adam @ Harewood House, 22^nd April to 31^stwww.harewood.org/ July

Hepworth Wakefield opens Spring 2011 www.hepworthwakefield.org/

Jaume Plensa @ Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, 9^th April to 4^th September www.ysp.co.uk/

Jean-Marc Bustamante @ Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 21^st April to 26^th June www.henry-moore.org/hmi

United Enemies @ Henry Moore Instute, Leeds, 27^thth January 2012 www.henry-moore.org/hmi October to 17

Glenys Barton @ Cartwright Hall, Bradford, until 20^thwww.bradfordmuseums.org/ February

Zed Nelson’s Love Me @ Impressions Gallery, Bradford, 4th March to 29th May www.impressions-gallery.com

David Spero: Churches @ Gallery 2, National Media Museum, 15^th April to 24^th September www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/

John Atkinson Grimshaw: Painter of Moonlight @ Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate,16^th April to 4^thwww.harrogate.gov.uk September

Carlos Nadal @ Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds, 7^th June to 20^th August www.leeds.ac.uk/gallery

Dutton and Swindells: Stag and Hound @ Project Space Leeds, until 26^th March www.projectspaceleeds.org.uk/

Rebecca Chesney @ Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, 9^th April to 18^th July www.ysp.co.uk/

Dorothy Bradford @ Manor House Museum and Art Gallery, Ilkley, until 20^th March www.bradfordmuseums.org/

David Hockney: Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm @ Bradford 1 Gallery www.bradfordmuseums.org

Beryl Beryl @ Yorkshire Craft Centre, Bradford, until 17^th February www.bradfordcollege.ac.uk

 

PHOTOS

Jaume Plensa

Zed Nelson

Dorothy Bradford

Posted on Thursday 27th January 2011
Rich Jevons

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