Northern Lights

I betook myself to the North of England to see the Andy Goldsworthy retrospective showing at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There are many reasons why this is a journey that should be made by anybody stuck on the narrow Isle of Blight in the next six months. Let me enumerate just a few reasons why - apart from the obvious: that it’s a park full of sculpture.

A Ripping Excursion
A visit to the park from London provides the occasion for a jolly trip through ye olde English countryside. Look! Charming towers poking out of the centre of bosky villages! And over there, ‘tis a man wearing gumboots! I caught a train to Wakefield (see The Vicar of ⎯., Goldsmith, Oliver), wandered around the cathedral precinct and then jumped on a bus to West Bretton before tramping my way down back-lanes and over stiles to the park. Of course the busstop was located on Sycamore Lane! Of course we passed through Crigglestone and Kettlethorpe! Of course I’ve edited out the skagbot teens marauding through the town! Of course I turned inwards as the bus drove through stock footage of industrial parkland!

Meeting Northerners
I do like friendly locals and the locals oop country are particularly friendly. All day, I delivered my inner monologue in a northern accent. I became especially enamoured of a bus-driver who heartily welcomed me to the civilised lands of the north, congratulating me on getting away from the sink of ignorance that is London. Said gent was a collector of militaria and had a question about the word ‘Melbourne’ mysteriously engraved on the back of a badge in his collection. We got along like a house on fire; before he dropped me off, he showed me photos of his spare room which was full of dummies dressed up in old military uniforms. Ace.

Authentic Countryside
The YSP lies in the grounds of an ancestral pile – Bretton House – which is still being used for farming. This means mud and animals and fences and stiles and dung. The well-informed art-lovers sensibly negotiated the terrain in gumboots. Myself, wearing Birkenstocks, I got oozily close to the earth of my birthplace. Not only do flocks of amiable sheep and cows graze on hillsides and rub up against plinths, wild ducks, geese, squirrels, and, I’d wager, porcupines, dwell in the nature reserve which cuts through it all. I will never again think of Henry Moore without hearing a gentle bleating in the background.

Aaaart
And, of course, an enormous and quite fabulous indoor-outdoor exhibition of the work of Andy Goldsworthy. Sculpture, archival drawings, photographs. Here are Striding Arches, en route to Cairnhead Forest, Dumfriesshire.