In summer 2024, the short film created by Yorkshire Graduate Award 2023 recipient, Astrid Butt, was screened in the Boathouse.

York-based painter Carol Douglas retrained as a painter in her 60s after being discouraged from an art career in her youth, painting with rollers rather than the traditional paint brush.

YSP and Yorkshire Artspace have collaborated to showcase work by 17 exceptional makers in YSP Centre, spanning contemporary ceramics, silversmithing, jewellery and leather work.

Leilah Babirye's clan of larger-than-life-size figures were carved from trees that had reached the end of their life in the Park.

Enter Yukihiro Akama’s world of intricately carved wooden houses of various sizes – from the size of a 50p piece to over 1m tall – each carved from a single piece of wood.

This winter, visit the Chapel to experience Light Organ, a joyful and interactive artwork that brings sound to life in light and colour. Use microphones to activate the glowing pipes of the Light Organ, and see your sounds flow in a sculptural display of colourful light.

World-renowned ceramicist Florian Gadsby presents new works in this solo exhibition, By My Hands. Gadsby works from his studio in North London, where he uses iron-rich stoneware clay to produce his precision wheel-thrown tableware and one-off decorative sculptural vessels using traditional tools, techniques and processes.

Immerse yourself in Jonathan Baldock's Touch Wood exhibition, inspired by the seasons, folklore, Wakefield Cathedral, and connections to nature.

What would it sound and feel like to be inside of a bubble? Step inside a deceptive, inner landscape of a scale that we, as humans, cannot usually physically experience ourselves. From our first experiences submerged in the womb, to the depths of the abyss and outer space - is the universe one big bubble?

Returning for a second year, this summer Roger Hiorns will transform the landscape with clouds of foam in this interactive artwork as part of the Curiosity and Wonder season. Activated at 11.00 and 14.00.

We are working with IOU on a new version of their Sound Wave Collider, a sculptural sound installation made of large air-ducting tubes and giant cones that emit a chorus of soundscapes into special listening zones.

Spark your imagination and create shared moments of delight this summer at YSP. Curiosity & Wonder is a packed programme of events and activities for all ages, exploring materials, the lifelong importance of play and engaging with the world around us in imaginative ways.

This project by artist Abigail Burt reflects on the climate crisis, species loss, conservation and activism. Take time to mould, shape and sculpt together, to make a wax sculpture of an endangered animal.

Balance and Form brings together the complementary practices of exquisite woodworkers Takahashi McGil and the intuitive printmaking of Emma Lawrenson.

This major exhibition is Erwin Wurm’s first museum show in the UK and presents sculpture, painting, photographs, video and drawings.

Ami Horrocks is the recipient of the Yorkshire Graduate Award 2022. During her time at YSP Horrocks has spent time working in the Boathouse and has been particularly drawn to water, inspired by the European folklore of Melusine, a female spirit of water.

Lindsey Mendick’s solo exhibition transforms The Weston Gallery, taking the form of a multi-media installation that investigates dreams, Gothic stories, television and cultural experiences from the 1990s.

Drew’s new work for YSP’s 18th-century Chapel is a powerful reflection on the weight of collective experience, memory, and the cycles of life and death, decay and regeneration.

This exhibition in the YSP Centre presents a collection of Palmer’s more recent limited edition giclee prints, which have been created from his much sought-after watercolour, ink and gouache paintings.

On display at YSP Centre, Stitched Stories is celebration of a three-month project that took place as part of YSP’s Summer of Love in 2022, bringing together 144 stories from visitors to the Park and is an acknowledgment that everyone’s story is unique and important.

To celebrate the launch of Norman Ackroyd’s newest publication, An Irish Notebook, we will be showcasing a group of this astonishing artist’s most recent etchings, all of which have been created between 2019-2022.

Focusing on the enjoyment and sometimes agonising experience of childhood, Hand Me Downs is the the largest exhibition of works by internationally renowned UK based mixed-media artist Annie Montgomerie.

Visualeyes is an exhibition of new work by artist Ellie Niblock, inspired by a month spent exploring the landscape of YSP. Niblock was selected for the 2020 Art for the Environment Residency Programme. After a delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Niblock began her time at YSP in November 2021 and returned in June 2022.

Celebrating the life and work of Sir Alec Clegg, this is the third major exhibition exploring Clegg's legacy that has been held by the National Arts Education Archive (NAEA) since its inception in 1985.

Working from her garden studio in West Yorkshire, the designer, maker and illustrator Samantha Bryan creates a delicate, humorous yet industrious species of fairy.

Roger Hiorns temporarily transforms the familiar YSP landscape with clouds of foam in this interactive artwork as part of the Summer of Love.

Arrivals + Departures is an interactive installation that explores life and love through our experiences of birth and death, two emotive moments that are common to us all no matter who we are, and which can evoke huge depths of feeling.

Jason Wilsher-Mills uses iPads and Wacom tablets to create bright, celebratory and poignant works exploring themes of disability. His digital drawings are then translated into huge inflatable works or human-sized fibreglass sculptures. Colourful and bold, his works are acts of activism that are visually captivating and use their joyfulness to begin serious conversations.

Rural environments are frequently seen as existing in opposition to queerness, with urban spaces typically being more accepting places for LGBTQIA+ people. This exhibition looks at ways in which queer artists are re-connecting with the landscapes around them by mapping and navigating their queer identity within these places, and disrupting traditional or prescribed ways of looking and understanding.

The Summer of Love is a series of projects and events at YSP about love and community. It will run from the summer solstice to the autumn equinox. The solstice is the longest day of the year, and the equinox marks the start of autumn. During this time artists will explore ideas around relationships, love, connection and understanding.

YSP presents two complementary exhibitions of drawings by Jaume Plensa. The exhibitions are staged in collaboration with the Picasso Museum, Antibes, France. Drawing is a very important part of Plensa's practice, as are themes of language and silence; darkness and light.

Table to Tide: A Yorkshire Conversation brings together a new body of work by Yorkshire-based designer, painter and illustrator Janine Burrows, celebrating the Yorkshire landscape.

YSP presents the first major European exhibition of sculpture, painting and prints by American artist Robert Indiana.

The feelings that arise from being forced to conceal your sexuality are a theme of McKenzie’s audio work Shame Chorus (2017). The artist refers to American writer Brene´ Brown who says that shame: “needs three things to grow... secrecy, silence and judgment”. These ideas of shame and secrecy resonate with issues that affected Robert Indiana’s own life.

Yukihiro Akama works from a furniture maker’s workshop in Huddersfield, where he is surrounded by the natural world. There, he creates beautifully intricate miniature wooden houses, carving each one from a single piece of wood.

David Nash has dedicated his artistic life to an evolving study of trees and wood. Through close observation and touch he has gained a rich and unique knowledge.

Raucous Invention: The Joy of Making was an ambitious, vibrant, and creative journey from Mark Hearld, exploring connections through collaboration and risk taking. The exhibition was a celebration of the joy and inspiration that comes from working with like-minded makers and organisations.

MADE is YSP Shop's changing showcase of contemporary craft and jewellery. It features the work of a curated range of established and up-and-coming artists, designers and makers.

In October 2021, Matty Bovan created an immersive installation in the Bothy Gallery at YSP. The work raised timely questions about identity, image and ownership. Participants could try on sculptural outfits and objects made by Bovan. The installation encouraged play and experimentation with self-image and the act of getting dressed.

YSP presented the first UK, solo museum exhibition by the British artist Annie Morris.

An exploration of the many facets of chaos, from visual artist Kate Daudy and physicist Kostya Novoselov.

Hannah Cash, YSP’s 2019 Yorkshire Graduate Award, returns this August with her collaborator and sister Jasmine.

Working with sculpture, photography and printmaking, Kedisha Coakley reconsiders objects and cultural symbols, and reframes history, race, culture and conventions of curatorial practice.

The YSP Chapel housed the awe-inspiring 399 Days by Rachel Kneebone. Named after how long it took to make, the monumental, ceramic, sculpture is the artist's most ambitious project to date. It is over five metres in height and comprises 63 exterior panels, each made by hand and fired in a kiln. Each panel features exquisite details. The artist alludes to the human body through legs that seem to be moving, alongside abstract and organic forms such as orbs and flowers.

What would a world without borders look like? What does it mean for us to be together beyond our historical ties? How can we stand in place of what is lost?

Bhangra Lexicon is the world’s first ‘visual dictionary’ of movements found within this beautiful artform, carefully compiled by World Bhangra Day founder, the Huddersfield-based dancer, Hardeep Sahota.

This major Arts Council Collection survey exhibition seeks to redefine post-war British sculpture by presenting a diverse range of work by women.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park presents an exhibition exploring human relationships between buildings, landscape and wellbeing.

YSP exclusively broadcast a new commission by the Portuguese artist RitaGT online to mark International Women’s Day on 8 March 2021.

Founded on an urgency to support the arts at a critical time, theVOV was made as a new virtual ecosystem. It presented landmark exhibitions from leading arts organisations for everyone to enjoy live and on demand.

YSP is delighted to present an exhibition of rare lithographs and etchings by Joan Miró, one of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century.

Illustrator Mark Hearld is known for lithographs, paintings and collages that take inspiration from the flora and fauna of the British countryside.

Brian Fell is well known for his landmark figurative public artworks, including Skyhooks in Manchester, Merchant Seamen’s Memorial in Cardiff Bay and YSP’s HaHa Bridge. However, his abstract work, which is the foundation of everything he does, has not been exhibited since the 1980s.

The UK’s largest ever exhibition by celebrated Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos (b. 1971).

A new major sculpture commission from emerging artist Alice Irwin will turn the iconic grand piazza in Halifax’s Piece Hall into a playground for the artists cast of distinctive characters from 28 February – 1 June 2020.

British artist Saad Qureshi explores what paradise means in a contemporary context in his first solo museum exhibition, Something About Paradise.

Yorkshire landscape and coastline focus of new exhibition by artist Melvyn Evans at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Hendry’s practice is often focused on themes of decay, the body, material use and re-use, and incorporated these ideas with her fascination with the imitation of life to create her first kinetic sculpture alongside other new work for the exhibition The Dump is Full of Images. 

Across the late 20th century, craft in the classroom has had a volatile history. This area of cultural and curriculum space has been much contested.

YSP brought together two projects by artists Ruth Ewan and Oscar Murillo that explored the continued vital role of a creative approach to child development.

YSP presented a major exhibition of over 40 works by the pioneering and highly influential American artist David Smith (1906-1965).

Award-winning designer Ella Doran showcased the transformation of wool in her most ambitious project to date.

Criminal Ornamentation  features a number of celebrated artists including Timorous Beasties, Susan Derges, Laura Ford, Ed Lipski, Alexander McQueen, Milena Dragicevic, Lis Rhodes, Bridget Riley, Yinka Shonibare CBE, Caragh Thuring and Bedwyr Williams.

Thukral and Tagra invited families, friends, and strangers to wrestle with the issues faced by farmers in India through their immaculately conceived installation  Bread, Circuses & TBD, which inaugurated The Weston Gallery.

Kimsooja transformed the historic chapel with To Breathe, an enthralling installation using light and mirrors and the latest in a series of projects exploring meditative qualities of space.

2018 visiting artists, Dillan Marsh and Eleanor Clare, return to YSP to showcase a project that explores the connections between real and imaginative spaces, inspired by the history of the Bretton Estate and traditions of folk tales and lullabies.

Willem Boshoff, one of South Africa’s leading artists, uses a variety of media including printmaking and sculpture to explore language, text and botany.

Children’s Images of Peace, War and Genocide is a touring exhibition presented as part of the National Arts Education Archive’s (NAEA) membership in the International Research and Archive Network for Children and Youth Drawings.

YSP partnered with The Piece Hall in Halifax to present their first visual arts commission in the iconic courtyard of the former cloth hall.

YSP presents an exhibition of work by Norman Ackroyd CBE, RA, one of Britain’s foremost landscape artists and contemporary printmakers working today. The Furthest Lands showcases a vast range of work that explores the western edges of the British Isles. 

Alice Irwin is a recent MA graduate in Printmaking from the Royal College of Art. Working with themes and imagery drawn from childhood memories, she creates bold and distinctive work in a practice that embraces sculpture as well as prints.

In collaboration with the artist’s foundation and family, YSP is proud to present a small selection of extremely rare limited edition prints by Joan Miró, giving a unique opportunity to own a work by the artist.

YSP presents Sean Scully: Inside Outside, the largest-ever presentation of sculptures and first exhibition of sculpture and painting in the UK by the Irish-born artist.

More than 75 individual soft sculptures showcase Finch’s masterful combination of up-cycled and new materials, from discarded wire, steel and wood, to vintage tapestries, cross stitch samplers, tablecloths, antique silverware and rescued cloth.

One of the most eminent artists working today, Giuseppe Penone presents his extensive new exhibition in YSP’s light-filled Underground Gallery and across the historic landscape.

The radical and vital work of Common Ground – the Dorset-based arts and environmental charity – is presented through archive material in the Garden Gallery as part of a continued collaboration. 

Acclaimed installation and performance artist Chiharu Shiota has created an awe-inspiring, site-specific installation of thread within the beautiful 18th-century Chapel. 

Calling upon a range of visual materials and other items held in the National Arts Exhibition Archive (NAEA), this exhibition celebrates the close relationship between art, games and play. 

Yorkshire Sculpture Park publishes  Flit, a 40th anniversary collection of poems by renowned poet Simon Armitage. Visitors are invited to see photographs featured in the book, and a film of the poet reading on site at the Park, in a new display in YSP Centre.  

Artist Jonny Hannah was born and bred in Scotland and now lives by the sea in Southampton. However, he also resides in Darktown, a mysterious coastal town not found on any map and peopled by pin-up girls, jazz artists and tattooed sailors.

No Borders is a rousing and hopeful neon work by Hilary Jack which was on display in the Formal Garden at YSP from 2018 to 2022.

The largest solo exhibition to date by artist, illustrator and printmaker Ed Kluz, Sheer Folly – Fanciful Buildings of Britain celebrates the eccentric, uncanny and overlooked follies, temples and towers that dot the British landscape.

Bangladeshi-born artist Rana Begum has curated her first exhibition, Occasional Geometries, an exhibition selected largely from the Arts Council Collection.

Alice Pattullo takes inspiration from house and home in her most ambitious project to date. The exhibition includes 60 new screen-printed editions, referencing Pattullo’s fascination with superstitions and folklore.

To coincide with the summer solstice, Haroon Mirza created an intervention in James Turrell’s Deer Shelter Skyspace as part of his ongoing Solar Symphony series.

Tread Softly presents works from the Arts Council Collection in which artists explore childhood experience and familial relationships, revisiting and reassessing pivotal moments and people within their lives.

In celebration of YSP's 40th anniversary in 2017, artists, supporters and volunteers chose 40 inspirational objects, collections and ideas from the National Arts Education Archive (NAEA).

Selected largely from the Arts Council Collection by YSP, as part of the National Partners Programme, this exhibition questioned what we know and understand about architecture, featuring work by artists including Martin Creed, Anya Gallaccio and Cornelia Parker.

Self-portraiture maintains an enduring presence throughout art history; in recent years artists have revolutionised and extended the genre by incorporating action, performance, narrative and explorations of identity.  

New sculptures, drawings and works drawn from nearly five decades of Cragg’s practice surveyed and demonstrated the artist’s pioneering and continued mastery of materials in the Underground Gallery and open air.

Beyond Boundaries: Art by Email, a collaboration between YSP and ArtRole, gave a platform to those who can’t physically visit the Park and celebrated the notion that ideas and art can travel even if people cannot.

Flights of Memory was Angela Harding's largest ever solo exhibition, presenting a striking collection of prints and paintings inspired by the thriving wildlife of Britain.

An immersive video installation by artist and academic Nishat Awan in the refurbished Bothy Gallery. Grounded in original field research, Migrant Narratives of Citizenship: A Topological Atlas of European Belonging presented a collection of maps which follow the borders of Europe, particularly along the Black Sea.

Kate Daudy creates written interventions, often in public spaces, based on an ancient Chinese literary practice of seeking to understand the universe through art and nature. 

YSP presented work by interdisciplinary, South African artist, James Webb. Considered to be one of the pioneers of sound art, the artist showcased We Listen for the Future, an exhibition comprising four sound pieces. Webb will take up residency at YSP in 2018, resulting in a new site-specific work for the Park.

To coincide with David Shrigley’s Fourth Plinth commission Really Good in London’s Trafalgar Square, YSP presented a display of the artist’s original drawings.

Curated by leading British artist Ryan Gander, this major touring exhibition offered a unique view of the Arts Council Collection in its seventieth anniversary year.

Taking the exceptional light qualities of the historic Chapel as inspiration, this exhibition explored the condition of transparency and in so doing responded to the particular aesthetic of the 18th-century building. 

In partnership with St Jude’s, YSP presented a unique group exhibition showcasing the best of contemporary UK art and design. 

Internationally renowned as a leading sculptor, this was Not Vital’s first major exhibition in the UK.

This exhibition – via Thomas' work and other documentary evidence – provided an insight into the nature of art training at the time and the way in which one particular student responded to that training.  

At Home was the first in a series of exhibitions curated from the Arts Council Collection as part of the National Partners programme, marking the Collection’s 70th anniversary. The exhibition highlighted Arts Council Collection works of domestic scale within the Bothy Gallery.

Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005) was a central figure in British art from the post-war period and throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Responding to Surrealism and Dadaism, his innovative approach is widely viewed as a precursor to and driver of the British Pop Art movement.

This was the first UK museum exhibition of work by the renowned American artist KAWS, whose wide ranging practice includes painting, sculpture, graphic design, toys and prints.

YSP invited visitors to take a stroll down Main Street in Jonny Hannah’s vintage-inspired homage to the independent trader.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park presented a significant exhibition by pioneering American video and installation artist, Bill Viola. It was the most extensive exhibition in the UK by the artist for over 10 years.

Agent of Change showed how revolutionary initiatives have prompted change in art, design and environmental education.

Bob and Roberta Smith responded to YSP’s National Arts Education Archive in a project celebrating the archive’s 30th anniversary.

Wave is a sweeping arch of bright red poppy heads suspended on towering stalks designed by artist Paul Cummins and designer Tom Piper, created to mark the centenary of the outbreak of war.

This major exhibition, in partnership with Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle, celebrated and commemorated the extraordinary career of Sir Anthony Caro (1924–2013).

This exhibition featured previously unseen papercuts and screenprints created for and derived from Ryan’s 2016 Rizzoli wall calendar commission; along with a limited edition, multi-coloured lasercut, exclusive to YSP. 

In 2015 YSP presented a major open-air exhibition of six sculptures by Ursula von Rydingsvard as an official Collateral Event at the prestigious 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia.

Throughout summer 2015, the internationally renowned artists and descendants of the Venini glassware dynasty, established by Paolo Venini on the island of Murano in 1921, brought their elegant sculptural forms and colourful glass paintings to YSP’s 18th century chapel.

The Philip Rawson Collection, held by NAEA (National Arts Education Archive), consists of several thousand items. 

The late 1970s and 1980s witnessed the emergence of a younger generation of artists working in the UK who began to receive international attention for practices which, although incredibly diverse, share a revived interest in the sculpted object, in materials, and in ideas around making

Born in Castleford, West Yorkshire, Henry Moore (1898–1986) is one of the most important artists of the 20th century. This major exhibition, in collaboration with The Henry Moore Foundation, provided a fresh approach to Moore’s work by considering his profound relationship with land, which was fundamental to his practice and fuelled his visual vocabulary.

This exhibition offered an insight into the life, ideas and work of two of the most influential educators of the 20th century. The photographs, paintings and publications gave evidence of the impact that Read and Clegg had on teaching, learning and provision for the arts in education.

YSP premiered Song for Coal, an immersive audio-visual work by Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson in the historic St Bartholomew’s Chapel, to coincide with the 30-year anniversary of the UK miners’ strike.

The largest solo exhibition to date by illustrator Emily Sutton took over YSP Centre throughout winter 2014.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park presented Wp Wp Wp, an exhibition by UK artist Fiona Banner featuring an ambitious new project, Chinook, and related work. The onomatopoeic title of the exhibition mimics the sound of helicopter blades in action, as commonly used in movie storyboards and comics.

South Wales-based illustrator Tom Frost took inspiration from YSP’s historic landscape and varied wildlife to create new work including limited edition screen prints, ceramics and homeware.

YSP presented an exhibition by Ai Weiwei in the Park's newly refurbished 18th century chapel. The project, the first by Ai Weiwei in a British public gallery since Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern in 2010, was accompanied by poetry readings from the works of celebrated poet Ai Qing, Ai Weiwei’s father.

A Touring Exhibition from the Arts Council Collection. Curated by Nicholas Alfrey, Joy Sleeman and Ben Tufnell, this exhibition featured work by some of the most important British artists of the last 50 years including Tony Cragg, Antony Gormley, Richard Long and Anthony McCall.

The first large-scale exhibition in Europe by highly acclaimed American artist Ursula von Rydingsvard illustrated the full scope of von Rydingsvard’s diverse practice and included more than 40 works of drawing and sculpture made over the last two decades.

Yorkshire Made Me is a series of photographs, by Jennifer Robertson and Lynne Fletcher, of men and women who have reached the height of their various chosen careers, celebrating the wealth and breadth of the county’s talent. 

The selection of drawings in this exhibition was made from the larger Marking Time: A Century of Drawing in Art Education exhibition, that was held at Batley Art Gallery in 2012, and offered another opportunity to consider how drawing informs and shapes teaching and learning.

YSP presented a solo exhibition of sculpture, animation and work on paper by British artist Thomas J Price, including the open-air premiere of Network (2013), the young artist's largest bronze to date.

Angie Lewin is celebrated for her striking prints of skeletal plant forms set against the sky. She took inspiration from YSP’s historic, 500-acre landscape to create a series of new prints and watercolours for this solo exhibition,

In October 2013 YSP opened the first major UK exhibition of work by internationally-acclaimed artist Amar Kanwar. The exhibition, in YSP’s Underground Gallery, centred on The Sovereign Forest (2012–), which explores the impact of mining and other commercial activities on the landscape and communities of Odisha (formerly Orissa), India.

This important exhibition of new and critically acclaimed work by Lucy + Jorge Orta revolved around the theme of water, which is central to the Ortas’ practice. The exhibition launched the major new artwork, The Raft of Medusa and a new life-sized bronze for the open air from the Ortas’ ongoing Spirits series.

This exhibition looked at the radical interaction of art and education in the 1960s, focusing on the work of Tom Hudson, a key figure in the Basic Design movement, which revolutionised art education across Britain in the 1950s and 1960s.

This exhibition was a poignant survey of sculpture with drawings by the late Zurich-based artist, Hans Josephsohn (1920–2012), whose career spanned more than 60 years before his death in August 2012. 

An Arts Council Collection exhibition selected by Richard Deacon. Garth Evans’ practice has largely been defined by the use of geometric, asymmetrical forms and a commitment to simple, everyday materials. One of the generation between Anthony Caro and New British Sculpture, Evans is noted for a body of work that offers a bridge between 1960s modernism and the lyrical experimentation with a broader range of materials that followed in the late 1970s.

This exhibition, which showcased Capper’s ongoing interest in industrial machines and the aesthetics of mechanical power, included his Earth Marking, Offshore and Material Handling series, which both reference the monumental scale of 1970s Land Art as well as the innovation of early engineering, such as Robert Gilmour Le Tourneau’s World War II ‘earthmoving machinery’.

Taking place in three of YSP’s indoor galleries and the open air, FABRIC–ATION featured over 30 vibrant works from the period 2002–2013 including sculpture, film, photography, painting and collage, with many works never before seen in the UK. This major exhibition was sponsored by Guaranty Trust Bank.

Hearld's practice stems from a love of the British countryside, curiosity for objects and a magpie approach to collecting. For the Birds & Beasts exhibition, Hearld took inspiration from YSP’s 500-acre historic estate and its inhabitant wildlife to create new work.

This exhibition at Batley Art Gallery presented work drawn from the collections of the National Arts Education Archive, based at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It reflected the nature of teaching and learning through drawing from the late 19th century through the 20th century.

Anish Kapoor is one of Britain’s most distinguished artists. He has achieved international acclaim for his sensual and beguiling sculptures created using pigment, stone, stainless steel and wax, and his work is represented in major exhibitions, collections and public spaces across the globe.

Florence Peake brought her new performance MAKE to YSP. MAKE celebrated the working life at the Park, including the movement, cleaning and installation of sculptures.  

YSP was proud to present the first major UK exhibition of sculpture by Joan Miró, one of Europe’s most important 20th century artists. The exhibition described the extraordinary wealth of Miró’s sculpture, much of which was made in the second half of his life. With key works set in the landscape, the exhibition set out to fulfil the artist’s desire that “sculpture must stand in the open air, in the middle of nature”.

In autumn 2011 YSP presented new and recent work by Rachel Goodyear. Tipped as one of Art Review’s Future Greats in 2008 and nominated for the Northern Art Prize in 2009, Goodyear’s compelling cast of characters inhabit a strange and complex world of contradictions, existing somewhere between the macabre and mundane.

MAKE SHIFT was the first solo exhibition by Liverpool-based artist Emily Speed, featuring sculpture, installation, drawing and photography.

This exhibition featured an extraordinary body of new and recent work by renowned Spanish artist Jaume Plensa. Encouraging tactile and sensory exploration, work included a 50-metre curtain of poetry made of suspended steel letters, large illuminated sculptures in the landscape, and engraved gongs that visitors could strike to fill the gallery with sound.

Rebecca Chesney explored and revealed changing environments and the impact of human activity, often creating installations that not only capture a sense of wonder in the natural world but also the inescapable struggle between survival and death.

YSP presented Soliloquy, a film by the Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, in the unique context of the Chapel.

A display on the Formal Terrace celebrated the work of eminent British sculptor Barry Flanagan (1941–2009). The three bronze sculptures were fine examples of his style; playful without being whimsical or sentimental.

Brighton-based illustrator Zara Wood aka Woody brought her enchanting characters and imagined world to YSP. Her stunning exhibition took inspiration from the estate’s design over 200 years ago as a private pleasure ground.

Rebecca Chesney was a visiting artist at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, working from her boathouse studio in the nature reserve. Working with the FERA Regional Bee Inspector, Chesney has introduced two new honeybee colonies to the site - these are thriving and provided an excellent source of research and inspiration for the artist.

In 2010 YSP presented a rich and extensive exhibition of work by David Nash, tracing the evolution of the artist's 40-year career and offering a vivid statement of his life's work.

The historic Chapel was converted into a unique exhibition space in 2009 with The Angel, a spellbinding work by the late American artist James Lee Byars (1932–1997).

This extensive exhibition brought together new and recent sculpture and works on paper by one of Britain’s foremost artists Peter Randall-Page.

This critically acclaimed exhibition was the first major display in Europe of work by Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) and included monumental sculpture never previously shown outside Japan.

Sophie Ryder's association with YSP began in 1986 during her residency, immediately after graduating from the RA Schools. Her work is an exploration of the female psyche and sexuality and frequently references the artist's own body as it morphs with the powerful energy and form of the hare.

This major exhibition presented a new assessment of Hall’s career over a 40-year period, during which time he developed a practice preoccupied with landscape and refined mark-making in space: an exploration of edge and shadow, and of spatial interval.

In this Bothy Gallery exhibition, Irish artist Liadin Cooke explored themes of ornamentation, place, and potent detail through a collection of sculptures and drawings.

This stunning exhibition of new and reworked sculpture, film and text by Glasgow-based artist Kenny Hunter was his largest to date. 

Exploiting the aesthetic and structural properties of recycled bottle crates, Winter/Hörbelt’s international reputation was secured by their full-scale ‘crate houses’; beautiful, light filled pavilions constructed from crates which, when stacked like building blocks, are both sculpture and structure.

Complementary exhibitions at YSP and Tate St Ives celebrated Barbara Hepworth's centenary in 2003. Both exhibitions drew on new insights into Hepworth's work and included some of the artist's most important sculptures, some not seen in the UK for many years.

In 2001, YSP commissioned a new exhibition, presenting a rare opportunity to see the work of talented contemporary artist Nick Crowe.

Bethan Huws’ delicate, oddly intriguing and rigorous works continued a vein of artistic enquiry initiated by Marcel Duchamp in the early 20th century: ‘art as idea’. As though peeling an onion, she revealed layer on layer of meaning in language with incisive intellectual clarity.

Matthew Dalziel and Louise Scullion’s important project at YSP combined video, photography, sound, multiples and a new outdoor sculpture commission.

In 2001, YSP presented the rare opportunity to see a comprehensive survey of work by influential British artist, William Tucker.

Marion Coutts held a one-person exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park which was the most important exhibition in her career in 2000. The show also coincided with her appointment as MOMART fellow at the Tate Gallery, Liverpool.

YSP had nurtured the proposal of a major one-person exhibition by Kan Yasuda, ever since his work had been included in their 1988 exhibition Sculptura: Carving from Carrara, Pietrasanta and Massa. The result was this exhibition of 18 marble and bronze sculptures by the leading Japanese artist.

In 1994, Yorkshire Sculpture Park was proud to present a large number of Henry Moore’s sculptures in the Bretton Country Park and an exhibition of nine rarely seen carvings on loan from the Henry Moore Foundation.