Wakefield is the epicentre of sculpture in Britain. Take a trip to the birthplace of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth and cross over into the realms of three-dimensional art: 10 exquisite galleries at Hepworth Wakefield, featuring carvings and castings by these artists, as well as many European masterpieces; sculptures stand out like standing stones along the green meadows of nearby Yorkshire Sculpture Park; and plenty of buses to the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.
The ever-changing programme of new exhibitions embraces sculpture to such an extent that anyone wishing to immerse themselves in sculpture, particularly of the last 100 years, will find it at its most concentrated in these few square miles of Yorkshire.
For example, one of this year’s most anticipated sculpture exhibitions brings together a wide range of works by the Jamaican-born artist Ronald Grumpy (1900-84) The first full-length exhibition at Hepworth Wakefield. Small portrait heads in wood and bronze of such towering figures as Paul Robeson and the artist’s brother, Harold Moody, founder of the Coloured People’s League, all have intense personalities. Hieratic figures in stone and oak combine the ancient past with Moody’s present in a striking visual poem.
His art spans the 20th century, from his native Caribbean island to London, and a period in modernist Paris in the 30s, always with an insistent and vivid figuration. The exhibition opens with a philosophical vision: a double-sided human head poised in the embrace of a serpentine form that rests on the claws of an animal and coils towards a bird’s beak. Atavistic, yet clearly modern in fiberglass resin, the work is called Human… Universe.
From the 1920s onwards, Moody worked in wood to mesmerising effect, using grain to give the female form an undulating movement. Several figures, all with titles Momin dappled light or even in underwater currents, the head is usually slightly bowed, the most delicate fold of the eye and eyelid suggesting a cheerful, thoughtful attitude.
Curvy and muscular, short and sturdy, these figures are all compressed power, even if they are small enough to be held by the neck. The majestic head of Moody’s little nephew is not much larger than a baby’s fist, the shell of his lively personality peeled away. A man with a sincere smile, his arms held rigidly at his sides, wearing only a sarong, is not much larger: Moody’s incarnation as a priest.
There are the Caribbean gods: intelligent, quixotic creatures in bronze. There is the Savacou, a mythological bird responsible for wind and thunder, later to become a star, its head brilliantly onomatopoeic: shaped like the sound of a squawk. Moody’s enormous 7ft version in aluminium still stands outside the University of the West Indies in Mona, named after the 1970s journal of the Caribbean Artists Movement edited by Edward Kamau Brathwaite.
Relating to: Dentist, modernist, activist: The many lives of sculptor Ronald Moody
Perhaps the most global, even universal, of all the sculptures here is Moody’s towering statue. Johanan In 1936 (almost 60 years later it was acquired by the Tate). Apparently named after John the Baptist, this elm trunk is curiously androgynous, swollen and undulating, and full of the luminous contour lines of the wood. His face has an inscrutable pharaoh’s expression, his body a kind of sanctified Buddha. Moody visited the British Museum in 1928, five years after he had come to England (actually to train as a dentist), and was, as he recalls, struck by the “tremendous inner power… the irrepressible movement in stillness” he found there. This is precisely what the best of his own work has.
Although this show makes it difficult at times to distinguish Moody among his many influences and peers – objects from the British Museum, various works of art by other CAM members – it is worth examining slowly and carefully. Moody’s art is powerfully good-natured, and Hepworth Wakefield brings his humanity, in every way, powerfully back to light.
South African artist’s parallel show Igshaan Adamsin the neighboring galleries, it has more soul and even more beauty. Adams (born 1982) takes tapestry and transforms it into clouds, landscapes, rhythmic interweavings, even human figures. She is the most magical and creative of textile artists working today.
A shower of open warps in silver twine sparkles with an aura of shining beads, pearls, shells and stone particles to sweep you straight into a flood. A waterfall of nylon rope, in which small dark elements are caught, suggests both crisis and waterfall. An extraordinarily complex structure of lace, cotton thread, thin chains and tiny jewels seems to hang from the wall, curving outwards and opening both arms wide. Ouma – grandmother – is called.
You look into every magnificent thicket and web, and you enter. And over the gallery, floating above you, hang clouds of dust and vortices, light as a feather but as significant as a meteor shower. Danger and memory are captured in his astonishing inventions, such as fuse wire and lamp filaments, shower heads and silk threads, sharp clips and plastic ties. They hold color and form as vaguely as real clouds, but they are derived from Adams’ imagination and inventiveness, his art of living dreams.
A few miles away, at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the Anglo-Indian artist Bharti Kher (born 1969) places giant tile figurines throughout the landscape—or so it seems. In fact, these curious goddesses are bronze casts of broken clay objects reconfigured into new shapes. A girl fits a woman, 23 child heads spring from a mother goddess, and a female musician transforms into her own tambourine. Late-blooming surrealism meets Asian tradition.
In the underground galleries, a majestic room made of dark blue bricks surrounds the viewer. Deaf Room Made from 10 tonnes of glass bangles, it commemorates the infamous Gujarat riots in 2002, when more than 1,000 people were killed and women were raped and burned. White bindis bloom like ice flowers on broken mirrors Milk tooth and a monolith of old radiators, titled Warm Winds Blowing from the West, It’s like a pile of bleached bones: look twice, think twice, be careful.
Kher’s hybrid art ranges from horned women to cow-headed goddesses and baboon-faced self-portraits. We are always mythical beings, part animal, to him. There is a backstory to everything – the crushed ambulance he encountered near his London studio; the saris his mother sold in Streatham, now painted in resin and covered like molten glass, in one case completely obscuring the figure beneath, a reference to Benazir Bhutto, the assassinated leader of Pakistan.
Sometimes the implication is clear and lyrical; other times, Cloud WalkerIt refers to the Dakini dancers of Tibetan mythology, completely opaque. But when form and content come together perfectly, no text is needed. The thin red line that runs the entire length of the YSP galleries, just above your head, shines in the sunlight of the day. It is an artery of glass bracelets: a beautiful female bloodline.
Star ratings (out of five)
Ronald Moody: Sculpting a Life ★★★★
Igshaan Adams: Bad Guy ★★★★★
Bharti Kher: Alchemies ★★★