So here are fourteen photographs chiefly within the setting of the Hepworth Wakefield, the art gallery on the River Calder which opened in 2011. Named after the Wakefield-born artist Barbara Hepworth, the gallery’s permanent collection is shaped around the sculpture of Hepworth and Henry Moore, with a major exhibition currently devoted to Anthony Caro. The building was designed by David Chipperfield, its sequence of trapezoids of varying heights and roof pitches, clad in pigmented concrete, an instance of neo-brutalism mixed with deconstructivism, and allowing in light through full-length side windows and controlled roof slots. As the Hepworth Wakefield progresses towards its fifth anniversary, plans have emerged over the past few weeks for a new riverside garden sanctuary.
The photographs show the main building from the front and rear; The Calder, the Hepworth Wakefield’s space for contemporary art installations; scrap figures, a boatyard, and the river’s flow; and artworks including Hepworth’s Winged Figure (in an aluminum version constructed as a prototype in 1962) and Coré (1960), and Allan Kaprow’s tire-laden YARD (1961, reinvented in 2014). Finally, two extraneous images taken elsewhere in Yorkshire have a flower in yellow and an orange and feathers in dirty water.
