Day 27: Wakefield
Wakefield is it seems on the up. Despite not previously internationally associated with cutting edge art despite its strong links to Hepworth and Moore, soon it will hold a huge multi-million pound art gallery, designed by that clever Sterling prize fellow David Chipperfield, this will sit alongside a new David Adaje market hall, and Will Alsop’s Orangey for the public art commissioning centre – Beam. Jeepers! How come this kind of culture and sophistication hasn’t rubbed off on it’s neighbour Leeds? This is surely going to re-invent Wakefield with already existing proximity to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park as the centre of culture for the region. Nino Vella from Wakefield Art Gallery showed us the plans for the new ‘Hepworth Wakefield’ including a look at the construction site. We also saw the current show at the Wakefield Art Gallery about art and architecture called – Grand Designs’, which predominantly contains artwork loaned from the Arts Council Collection.
Site of the new ‘Hepworth Wakefield’ art gallery
Following this lead in the afternoon we visited the nearby Yorkshire Sculpture Park meeting with Natalie Rudd from the aforementioned Arts Councils Collection. Natalie showed us the library and conference facility located at the Longside Gallery way up on the hill above the parkland. Here in peaceful silence curators can come to research the Arts Council’s works available for gallery loan, one can find the details of the thousands of artworks collected since 1946. They have a cavernous office, built in a kind of agricultural shed at the top of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and internally designed by Tony Fretton who created London’s Lisson Gallery. For some reason it seems odd but exciting to have this blue chip outpost of the Capital’s art scene (in fact an outpost of the Hayward gallery) here amongst the Northern sheep and agricultural concrete (The full Arts Council collection is available to see online).
Tony Fretton designed interior for the rural offices of the Arts Council Collection