Blog

28th September 2025
Visit to Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Autumn sunny day. 

I love Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I love sculpture. I love the buildings at YSP. I love the landscape at YSP. I don't always love what the artists exhibit. Sometimes the sculptures at YSP pass me by.

If you've never been to YSP, let me explain a little about the layout. There is a modern visitors' centre with cafe, toilets, exhibits, and a shop. There is also a large separate building called the underground gallery, and an active educational centre. There are hundreds of acres of Yorkshire landscape to explore too, dotted about with notable sculptures. Those works include pieces by Dame Barbara Hepworth, Damien Hirst, Sir Anthony Caro, and Henry Moore.

The YSP has a continuous rolling programme of exhibits from internationally renowned artists. There is a lot to see. Much that is visually interesting, intriguing, exciting, inspiring and even magnificent. But it struck me today, that much of what I'd seen left me uninformed and confused. I had no idea what the artists were trying to convey with their works. I know they each have some tenet behind their work, some ethos or philosophy they're trying to express. I just don't always get it. As a means of communication art often fails.

I have felt this before, when viewing sculpture.

I have to quickly add that I totally understand the work of Henry Moore, and Dame Barbara Hepworth. I love their work, and really enjoy it hugely. They each had a relationship with the natural world. Their works had an inescapable aesthetic appeal that carried their work and entertained the viewer. 

Much of my own artistic output is concerned with shape and form. The rocks I am so obsessed with are naturally occurring sculptures. They are their most basic level aesthetically appealing. All the other stuff that goes along with geological rock and stone such as their vast age, origins, and historic relevance are in fact incidental.

Perhaps being autistic denies me the ability to understand the emotional nuances other artists seek to express through their work? Maybe. Could it be I just have a blind spot when it comes to interpretation? I don't know. 

I now feel sure that for me, it will always be the aesthetic appeal of a photographic image that is preeminent. I will be unashamed about that. Those ancient rocks that once sat on the equator, formed at the bottom of a shallow tropical sea, may be academically interesting, but above all they have to look good. Not pretty perhaps, but my photographs have to be operatic, dramatic, and bold. I don't want the viewer to be left in any doubt.