At one with nature

Yorkshire Sculpture Park is the first and best of the breed in the British Isles. Since 1977 it has activated 500 acres of undulating land between Barnsley and Wakefield in a unique way. A man-made upper and lower lake, with a weir and cascade at the narrow junction between the two, runs through the middle of the Bretton Hall estate â” a widening of the River Dearne at the bottom of a valley. An 18th-century manor house survives. Farming continues in a professional way but as part of another focus, which is, of course, aesthetic.

Andy Goldsworthy was YSP’s Artist in Residence in 1987. Since then he has worked and shown in Japan and North America among other places. His familiar vocabulary of elemental shapes, including the circle, the cone and the arch, continues to be in evidence along with his fondness for serpentine lines and cracks in stone, wood or clay.