Today the family went to the Yorkshire Sculpture park near Wakefield.
We met up with my oldest friend from school and his wife and had a lovely day in the West Yorkshire sun.
The YSP is great for many reasons - but the main one is that it is free.
The second reason is that they have really great exhibitions.
We went a few years ago, before Ben was born, to an Antony Gormley exhibition and were blown away by the "Field for the British Isles" piece, the thousands of tiny terracotta statues filling an entire room.
At the moment, the main exhibition is from a Spanish artist named Jaume Plensa - and it's rather good.
Most of his works revolve around human heads or bodies, featuring a variety of words, names and / or letters.
A selection of his works can be found here.
More of my photos can be found on this Flickr set.
I really liked "The Heart of Trees", a set of cast-men, each embracing a tree, with the names of composers stuck to their bodies in large letters. "The Three Graces" were huge heads stuck to the wall, mimicking see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil in their actions. The spookiest exhibition was a set of Alabaster Heads; weirdly shaped heads that looked like holograms, even though they were actually 3D. In the corridor, the 29 Palms, a set of metal letters hanging from the ceiling forming phrases, made a wonderful noise.
One of his exhibitions involved a set of 11 gongs, each about 1 1/2 metres in diameter set around in a giant circle. We were allowed into the room in groups of around 8 and were given a small introductory talk by one of the guides. It went along the lines of "hit them on the front not the back and in the middle not the sides". So off we went and gave them a bash. They made a great sound and it was quite tempting to use the hefty mallets with some force. It all became a little too much for the guide as he shouted "this is supposed to be a room of contemplation!" - joyless bastard. If you give us gongs then expect them to be hit!
We slowly meandered around the rest of the beautiful site - marvelling at the Barbara Hepworths and the Henry Moores until we got tired. The kids seemed to really enjoy being outside, being able to run around in the sun and looking at the weird "art", with the adults feeling that it was at least in some way educational and hopefully inspiring in future years.
YSP - Definitely worth a return!
We met up with my oldest friend from school and his wife and had a lovely day in the West Yorkshire sun.
The YSP is great for many reasons - but the main one is that it is free.
The second reason is that they have really great exhibitions.
We went a few years ago, before Ben was born, to an Antony Gormley exhibition and were blown away by the "Field for the British Isles" piece, the thousands of tiny terracotta statues filling an entire room.
At the moment, the main exhibition is from a Spanish artist named Jaume Plensa - and it's rather good.
Most of his works revolve around human heads or bodies, featuring a variety of words, names and / or letters.
A selection of his works can be found here.
More of my photos can be found on this Flickr set.
I really liked "The Heart of Trees", a set of cast-men, each embracing a tree, with the names of composers stuck to their bodies in large letters. "The Three Graces" were huge heads stuck to the wall, mimicking see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil in their actions. The spookiest exhibition was a set of Alabaster Heads; weirdly shaped heads that looked like holograms, even though they were actually 3D. In the corridor, the 29 Palms, a set of metal letters hanging from the ceiling forming phrases, made a wonderful noise.
One of his exhibitions involved a set of 11 gongs, each about 1 1/2 metres in diameter set around in a giant circle. We were allowed into the room in groups of around 8 and were given a small introductory talk by one of the guides. It went along the lines of "hit them on the front not the back and in the middle not the sides". So off we went and gave them a bash. They made a great sound and it was quite tempting to use the hefty mallets with some force. It all became a little too much for the guide as he shouted "this is supposed to be a room of contemplation!" - joyless bastard. If you give us gongs then expect them to be hit!
We slowly meandered around the rest of the beautiful site - marvelling at the Barbara Hepworths and the Henry Moores until we got tired. The kids seemed to really enjoy being outside, being able to run around in the sun and looking at the weird "art", with the adults feeling that it was at least in some way educational and hopefully inspiring in future years.
YSP - Definitely worth a return!