RA Recommends: this autumn in Yorkshire

Published 7 October 2015

From the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to the newly opened Centre of Ceramic Art, the county hosts some outstanding shows this autumn.

  • From the Autumn 2015 issue of RA Magazine, issued quarterly to Friends of the RA.

    Going Public

    Various Venues, Sheffield, 16 September – 12 December 2015
    Going Public peeks into the contemporary collections of Europe’s leading art patrons, sharing their works across five Sheffield venues. The initiative includes an exhibition at the Graves Gallery of rarely seen artworks by the godfather of conceptual art Marcel Duchamp, on loan from Berlin-based Egidio Marzona’s collection, while in Sheffield Cathedral, Dan Flavin’s shrine of fluorescent tubes ‘monument’ for V. Tatlin (1969–70) is on view besides installations by Sarah Lucas, Jake and Dinos Chapman, and Maurizio Cattelan, drawn from Turin’s Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection.

    British Art Show 8

    Leeds Art Gallery, 9 October 2015 – 10 January 2016
    The British Art Show is the biggest travelling exhibition of contemporary art in the UK – it takes place once every five years and is widely recognised as an arbiter of the most exciting artists working in the country. The eighth edition embarks on its tour at Leeds Art Gallery, taking our digital age as its theme. Among the notable names is Anthea Hamilton, whose work has included Let’s Go! (2013), a theatrical environment in which Japanese dance-dramas are enacted.

    Centre of Ceramic Art

    York Art Gallery
    Celebrated annually on 1 August, Yorkshire Day was marked this year with the reopening of York Art Gallery after an extensive redevelopment. The roof space of this imposing Victorian building has been transformed into the Centre of Ceramic Art, two expansive new rooms showing star pieces of British studio ceramics by Bernard Leach and Lucie Rie. You can also see the latest developments in ceramics, such as Merete Rasmussen’s Yellow Open Form (2010), in which an acid-yellow strip chases itself into infinity.

  • Caro in Yorkshire

    Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle, until 1 November
    Anthony Caro RA was a studio assistant to the Yorkshire-born Henry Moore before his own reputation developed as Britain’s most admired abstract sculptor. The Henry Moore Institute teams up with Leeds Art Gallery, Hepworth Wakefield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park – collectively known as the Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle – to honour the late artist, presenting exhibitions that showcase works from 60 years of Caro’s career, including his sprightly steel sculptures painted in eye-popping colours, such as Aurora (2000–03).

    Bob and Roberta Smith RA

    Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 5 September 2015 – 3 January 2016
    The National Arts Education Archive at Yorkshire Sculpture Park traces the development of arts education in the UK. The park enlists Bob and Roberta Smith RA this autumn to celebrate the archive’s 30th anniversary, staging a show of the Academician’s characteristically rousing banners and signs emblazoned with pro-art slogans (Art Makes Children Powerful, 2013).

    Magali Reus

    Hepworth Wakefield, until 11 October
    The young Dutch artist Magali Reus cites Anthony Caro RA as an important influence. As the British sculptor’s machine-like metal works go on display at Hepworth Wakefield to coincide with Caro in Yorkshire, Reus presents her unsettling sculptures, which assume the aesthetics of product and industrial design, often appearing like odd instruments whose purpose is yet to be defined (Leaves (Peat, March), 2015).

    Josephine New is a writer who also works for Phaidon Press.


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