SCULPTURE PARK
Written by Ben Tallon
It was Chris Pyrate, during our conversation on episode 211 of the ‘The Creative Condition’ podcast who questioned the default affixing of ‘childlike’ to ‘imagination.’ His take (with which I agree) was that imagination is… imagination. We only call it ‘childlike’ because it becomes much harder as we mature into adulthood. The maturity trap. That’s what I call it. Anyway, I took the family, including my parents, along to the magnificent Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It was a moody autumnal day. A spasm of yellow, red, and orange trees. A climate crisis autumn if I ever saw one, complete uncertain midges lingering on into the new season. Yorkshire Sculpture Park is sprawling - a national treasure of a site - and I felt annoyed with myself for suggesting that the sheer space and natural setting would be good for ‘the kids to run about in.’ As if the rest of us, ranging between 41 and 69 wouldn’t get the same evolutionary urges to roam, scale, sneak, see, and scream. It’s what we are. Sure enough, the kids were off and running early doors, but so was I, and not under-cover of 4-year-olds. I paced 360 around Henry Moores, and Damien Hirsts, awed by the context, this clutch of nature in which they lived, exposed to the elements, inviting ponderance and play. As we progressed around a route that would enable the kids to tick off sculptures on their worksheets, I noticed conversations deepen as we came together and parted, then came together again in changing groups of 2, 3, and 4 adults, at times a full 6, asking the kids basic questions about colours, shape, scale, and standpoint, questions that I realised I hadn’t asked of these gorgeous lumps of imagination before. I never did pay too much attention in art history or theory, and my joy took on new forms.
But those chats!
Now 3/4 of the way through Richard Louv’s The Nature Principle, I understood that they were not just coincidence; the art was in every leaf, tree, heavy cloud, the flocks of Canada geese rip-roaring over the lake, and in the other visitors who shared the park with us. This whole place was curation in motion, from seed to sculpture; a cocktail of colour coming together as art and nature should.
The pin finally pierced the balloon in a Friday tea-time Bradford traffic jam as we sat and stared sullenly out the misty car windows at red lights and grey blocks of concrete, and Matalan. But my mind appreciated the range in the day’s diet, even if I wanted to get onto brighter surrounds once more. The conversation in the car gravitated towards benefits and the state of post-industrial northern towns, and just like the layered chat in YSP, this wasn’t without cause. I allowed my mind to drift as the marvels of the bronze giants continued to stir something primal.