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Joanna Mowbray and Yorkshire Sculpture Park:
a working relationship
Established in 1977, Yorkshire Sculpture Park is recognised as one of the
foremost open air art initiatives worldwide. It was the country's first
permanent sculpture park and currently occupies over 500 acres of historic
landscape, primarily developed in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It
has built its reputation on curating exhibitions and projects in the open
air and by working closely with contemporary artists, providing
opportunities for showing, making, understanding and enjoying sculpture in
the open air. The programme and facilities continue to grow and there are
now two indoor galleries and a number of distinct open-air spaces.
Artists are central to YSP and the first artist residency was established
in 1978 with the appointment of John Maine. Since then YSP has invited
innumerable artists to work in a variety of ways, resulting in
publications, exhibitions, CD Roms, web sites or significant installations,
as in the cases of David Nash, Andy Goldsworthy, Judith Cowan and Joanna
Mowbray. Alongside these are smaller projects by younger artists, such as
Kerry Stewart and KIT, together with artists from other countries who have
been able to live and work at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, including John
McEwen (Canada), Federico Assler (Chile), Mrinalini Mukherjee (India),
Patrick Dougherty (USA), Joanna Przybyla (Poland) and Aganetha Dyck
(Canada).
The bursaries and residencies vary considerably but are primarily aimed at
offering direct financial and technical support to artists, giving many the
chance to experiment at a critical point in their development. The
technical, curatorial and administrative support offered by YSP staff is
unique and often results in ambitious projects. Also, having artists
working on site feeds into the culture of the Park, through contact with
staff and visitors, and this has been critical to the development of YSP.
Joanna Mowbray's long and fruitful association with YSP began in 1985 when
her interest in creating sculpture for the landscape was rekindled by YSP's
invitation to her to take up a three month residency, resulting in Movement
1, 2 and 3, an installation of three ambitious and challenging steel and
mesh sculptures. Eschewing natural media, she turned to industrial
materials so that the work had permanence and resilience, although her
abilities as an artist enabled her to retain a sense of transparency and
delicacy, reflecting the changing light and rhythmic qualities of the
surrounding landscape.
The relationship was further developed in 1991 when YSP offered Joanna a
twelve month bursary, part-funded by the Henry Moore Foundation, which
provided her with the opportunity to experiment and develop new works. The
first results of the bursary were revealed in 1992 when Mowbray
collaborated with the dancer and choreographer Gregory Nash and the
composer James Beirne to create a series of steel sculptures for a vibrant
and dynamic performance, Surface Tension, performed at University College
Bretton Hall and Contact Theatre in Manchester.
The bursary allowed Joanna to reconsider her sculpture in relation to
landscape and the movement of people, resulting in a new body of work shown
in 1995 in the Pavilion Gallery and on Driveside (see project Installation) and accompanied by a publication with an essay by the art critic Mary Sara. The sculptures
called for a precise understanding of the landscape and the ability to deal
with its grand, nebulous scale. Between sculptures, viewer and space there
is a dynamic tension: “The way I position the sculpture in relation to its
situation is very important to the expression of the work. The decision to
work on groups of forms came about because I wanted to have some
flexibility to adjust the relationship between the forms in different
exhibition spaces. I perceive this aspect of my work as parallel to the
concerns of a choreographer”.
These qualities were also found in Mowbray's gallery works: large steel
'drawings' and their precursors, exquisite hand-held lead maquettes. In
Mowbray's stain and graphic drawings on board, simplicity, coolness and
honed-down forms were again brought together, grouped in single lines.
YSP's association with this gifted artist continues though providing
support for her new ventures in the form of technical advice, references
and as a sounding board. In addition, the display of the magnificent and
demanding steel sculpture, Beyond and Within as part of its loan
collection, where it is shown alongside works by major international
artists, is a testament both to the artist's sensibility and to her
determination. |
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