Ref: PR1681
Date: 05/02/08

Grand Designs is the title of a prestigious new sculpture exhibition to open at Wakefield Art Gallery on Saturday (February 9).

Most of the sculptures have been borrowed from the Arts Council Collection and will include models and supporting drawings, all inspired by the geometry and language of architecture.

Cllr Clive Hudson, Wakefield Council's Cabinet Member for Culture, Tourism and Sport, said: "Wakefield is one of the first galleries to take advantage of the Arts Council Collection moving north to Longside. We are proud to be helping them to get artworks from a public arts collection out into the public realm."

The exhibition features diverse work including Anya Gallaccio's emotive yet cryptic 'Can love remember the question and the answer' constructed from a very large mahogany door with decomposing flowers.

"The gallery has to buy special flowers that will decompose during the exhibition," said Cllr Hudson.

Other exhibits include a Henry Moore bronze, 'Seated Figure Against a Curved Wall', which relates to the commission he did for the UNESCO building in Paris, Langlands and Bell's relief ground plan of the Rank Xerox Building, Düsseldorf, which explores the complex relationship linking people with architecture. The exhibition also includes some two-dimensional work such as Tess Jaray's designs for Wakefield Cathedral precinct. Other acclaimed artists in the show include British 'Constructivists' such as Victor Pasmore, Anthony Hill and Kenneth and Mary Martin. These artists derived their inspiration from mathematics and geometry resulting in artworks that are very ordered and architectural.

The exhibition of just over 20 works, some large-scale, is part of an ongoing programme linking themes around artists' responses to design and architecture. This is in recognition of Wakefield Art Gallery's imminent move to The Hepworth Wakefield, designed by the eminent British architect David Chipperfield. The new building will open early in 2010 on Wakefield's historic Wakefield Waterfront.

Grand Designs, which runs until April 13, is a follow up to the popular exhibition Changing Rooms, which was held at the gallery in 2003 and used the intimate spaces of the gallery to look at humble 'domestic' objects in new and innovative ways.

Wakefield Art Gallery, at Wentworth Terrace, Wakefield is open Tuesday -Saturday 10.30am-4.30pm; Sunday 2-4.30pm. Admission is free. Contact 01924 305796 for further details.

ENDS