Anish Kapoor: Flashback, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK

Anish Kapoor: Flashback
Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK
Through 4 November 2012

Anish Kapoor, White Sand, Red Millet, Many Flowers, 1982

Wood, cement and pigment 

Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London

© Anish Kapoor

Flashback is a major series of touring exhibitions from the Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre. Taking as its starting point the Collection’s founding principle of supporting emerging artists through the purchase of their work, the series showcases internationally renowned British artists whose works have been acquired by the Collection. The monographic exhibitions combine works from the Collection with new pieces borrowed directly from the artists, giving a unique insight into the evolution of these key figures in British art. Following on from the success of the first Flashback exhibition of work by Bridget Riley, the second artist in the series of monographic exhibitions is renowned artist and Turner Prize winner, Anish Kapoor. 

Anish Kapoor, Longside Gallery. 

Courtesy of Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Photo © Jonty Wilde 

Anish Kapoor’s sensual and beguiling sculptures are created using a range of materials including pigment, stone, polished stainless steel and wax. Following on from the critical acclaim of his show at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2009, this Flashback exhibition gives an opportunity to explore Kapoor’s earlier works alongside recent pieces lent directly by the artist. The exhibition includes a selection of major sculptures on loan from UK collections, and from the Arts Council Collection. This is the first survey of Kapoor's work to be held in the UK, outside of London.

Anish Kapoor, Untitled, 1995 

Stainless steel 

Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. 

Acquired with the assistance from The Henry Moore Foundation, 1998 

© Anish Kapoor

The show is selected by the artist in close dialogue with the Arts Council Collection and includes works such as White Sand, Red Millet, Many Flowers (1982) which demonstrates Kapoor’s early interest in applying raw pigment to a range of organic forms. The sculpture was acquired by the Arts Council Collection the same year and has been lent to many major institutions as a key example of his early work. Alongside this, the optically illusionary Untitled (1997-98) is a highlypolished stainless steel void embedded into the wall that draws the viewer into a seemingly bottomless reflection and is emblematic of the seamless mirrored forms that have made Kapoor a household name. The exhibition includes the large-scale installation Her Blood (1998) shown for the first time in the UK.

Anish Kapoor, Red in the Centre, 1982 

© National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery. 

Photo © Jonty Wilde - Courtesy of YSP

Anish Kapoor, Untitled, 1983 

© Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. 

Photo © Jonty Wilde - Courtesy of YSP

The exhibition is toured by Hayward Touring Exhibitions. It was seen at Manchester Art Gallery (5 March - 5 June 2011) before touring to the Sculpture Court, Edinburgh College of Art (Edinburgh Festival, Summer 2011), Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery (19 November 2011 - 11 March 2012) and Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (16 June - 4 November 2012).

Anish Kapoor: Flashback - An illustrated exhibition catalogue was published, including an essay by Michael Bracewell and an interview with Anish Kapoor by Andrew Renton.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, Wakefield WF4 4LG
Yorkshire Sculpture Park's website: www.ysp.co.uk
The Arts Council Collection's website: www.artscouncilcollection.org.uk

Sophie Ernst: Home, YSP Exhibition, UK

Sophie Ernst: Home
Bothy Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK
17 March - 1 July 2012

SOPHIE ERNST: HOME in the Bothy Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park 

Photo © Jonty Wilde - Courtesy YSP

YSP presents the first solo exhibition in the UK by Sophie Ernst. HOME is a major ongoing project confronting political turmoil and displacement with individual memories of home and ideal places. Ernst interviews people forced to leave their homes due to political upheaval, such as during the Partition of South Asia in 1947, and builds an architectural model of the houses they describe. She then projects onto this sculpture video footage of the person's hands as they describe their memory of that building, transforming the inanimate object into a virtually inhabited space, and ascribing a profound intimacy.

YSP is committed to supporting and articulating sculpture practice as well as effecting change on an individual and social level. During the exhibition, Ernst will develop a new sculpture. For this project she will work in collaboration with Taha Mehmood, the YSP Learning Team and a group of young people from YSP’s Shared Horizon initiative which works with unaccompanied children seeking asylum in the UK.

SOPHIE ERNST, Home, 2012
Published by YSP

A book documenting HOME with essays by Iftikhar Dadi, Taha Mehmood, Helen Pheby and Sophie Ernst as well as commentaries on HOME by Nazmi Al-Jubeh, Yazid Anani, Kamila Shamsi and Salim Tamari was published by YSP.

ABOUT THE ARTIST SOPHIE ERNST

Born in 1972, Sophie Ernst first trained as a industrial mechanic with BMW before graduating from the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunst in Amsterdam in 2000. She won the Golden Cube award at the 26th Kassel Dokfest awarded for best installation. Sophie Ernst works between Asia and Europe and was Assistant Professor at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore (2003-2007). The exhibition is sponsored by The Mondriaan Foundation with support from the Dutch Embassy in London. The HOME project is made possible by the support of Green Cardamom, Sharjah Foundation and the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. Sophie Ernst is represented by Green Cardamom Gallery, London and Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai. Sophie Ernst’s exhibitions include Presence of an Absence, (Ernst & Mehmood) at Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden; Emerging Discourse at Bodhi Art Gallery, New York; Re-Forming Landscape at the National Art Gallery, Islamabad; Best of Discovery at ShContemporary, Shanghai; The Punjab: Moving Journeys at the Royal Geographical Society, London; Sophie Ernst: Lovedolls at the Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke, Munich; Along the X-Axis - video art from India and Pakistan at Apeejay Media Gallery, New Delhi; Touching from a Distance at Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, Wakefield WF4 4LG
Yorkshire Sculpture Park's website: www.ysp.co.uk