EXHIBITION | Hepworth Wakefield

http://www.hepworthwakefield.org/

I took a drive from Sowerby Bridge to Wakefield. I took a cross country route up hill and down dale and in the valley bottoms saw black and brick towns framed by cows grazing in vivid verdant pasture. Driving through Halifax, Batley, Dewsbury and the like is a crash course in the industrial revolution with canal’s, railways and roads scratching the valley floors and grand brick buildings proclaiming the wealth that was drawn like blood from the many poor souls that came off the land and into the mills.

The Hepworth rises like blocks of granite from the river Calder’s rushing weir - its windows like picture frames exhibiting the industrial landscape from inside and punters from the reverse. It is monumental in aim if not quite scale. It is popular and populist. There are coach loads of students and mums and their half-term kids sketching and pondering and running around the Henry Moore’s (this was great to see). There are seven or eight galleries - with a rotating display that must keep the place more energetic than static. There are precious few Hepworth’s on show but those that are demonstrate the brilliance she has - where the weight of the forms can be felt not just seen.

Jack Smith

There is an exhibition of post war British painting and sculpture including a wonderful picture by Jack Smith one of the 'kitchen sink painters’ that celebrated the life of ordinary people. It is a kitchen scene with a woman and her baby seated at a scruffy kitchen table. In the background is and girl child by an open door. The banality of the place is spiced by some half told narrative. Why is the door open ? Is the girl about to leave. Why ? Where is the man ? It struck me such intrigue is so important - especially in Photography where there’s a temptation to tell the whole story - the dull truth. Better intrigue and entertain with narrative so that the viewer is asked to interact - to be participatory rather than passive.

In the same room there’s a Frank Auerbach where the paint is layered thick like shit. It is visceral, sculptural.

Bernard Matthews

And there is a sculpture of a chicken. Not wearing my glasses I read the attribute to be Bernard Matthews. My moral compass swung like mad until I put my glasses on and re-read as Bernard Meadows.

There is a small gallery where a bit of social history nicely pokes a finger in the eye of the rich. Paintings of elegant society women by James Tissot are compared photographic images of Victorian 'pit brow lasses’. The luxurious gowns and costumes warn by lissom beauties contrast sharply with mine working women in trousers (their attire apparently shocked the victorians more than the social injustice of decease and early death). Arthur Munby took some of the photos, some others were curiosity postcards.

The comedic highlight of the visit was a performance piece in the Calder (a new space in a converted mill that is next the main building). The piece by Turner nominee Roger Hiorns sees him sit amidst found objects like car engines and industrial tables. While we waited for the artist to begin an elderly couple sat down to eat their packed lunch. They were quickly admonished by an attendant - they had quite understandably not realised the benches portent as sculpture. Then a young lad when realising Hiorns was about to appear naked turned to his mum and said (in a broad Yorkshire accent) “I’ll be scarred for life”. Brilliant.