From 29 May 2010 Yorkshire Sculpture Park will present a rich and extensive exhibition of work by David Nash, tracing the evolution of the artist's forty year career and offering a vivid statement of his life's work. Sculpture, installation and drawings will range across the Park and include new monumental works for the Underground Gallery, a retrospective survey in Longside Gallery and contextual displays from the artist's archive alongside sculpture in the open air and a permanent outdoor commission. This is envisaged to be the largest exhibition, present or future, by an internationally acclaimed artist who has developed an eloquent understanding of trees, working with their traits to create sculpture, installation, projects and related drawings.

The Underground Gallery will feature imposing new works, including huge redwood craggs and large black eucalyptus spheres, which the artist is currently making in California. The expansive Longside Gallery will present a survey of retrospective work from the artist's and international collections. The Bothy Gallery will illustrate one of the artist's most celebrated projects, Wooden Boulder, a large piece of 200 year-old oak released into a stream in the Welsh mountains in 1978, whose journey is documented through drawing, film and photography. The Garden Gallery will show works from the artist's archive, which explore the development of his practice.

The exhibition will be documented through a specially commissioned artist film by Pete Telfer, edited alongside archive footage, presenting a fascinating insight into the artist and his practice. There will also be a box set of four publications with texts by Ben Tufnell, Peter Murray, Dr Sabine Schlenker and the artist. The artist will also present a limited edition print and a limited edition twig sculpture.

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Collection Artist(s)

Glossary

  • Drawing

    The depiction of shapes and forms on a flat surface chiefly by means of lines although colour and shading may also be included. Materials most commonly used are pencil, ink, crayon, charcoal, chalk and pastel, although other materials, including paint, can be used in combination.

  • Edition

    All copies of a book, print, portfolio, sculpture, etc., issued or produced at one time or from a single set of type. Printed works can be made in an edition of between one and many thousands of copies. With most printing techniques the plate or screen will become worn if very many prints are made, so to maintain quality (and exclusivity) editions of original prints are usually kept below one hundred copies and normally average between thirty and fifty copies. Prints made up of several different plates can be extremely complicated and time-consuming to edition, so in these cases editions are kept low for practical reasons. Sculptural editions are a set of cast sculptures taken from the same mould or master. These editions are usually much lower, consisting of no more than six casts. Though each cast in an edition might have a lower value than a unique piece, it may be a more effective way of offsetting costs of an expensive process such as bronze casting.

  • Film

    A transparent, flexible plastic material, usually of cellulose acetate or polyester, on which light-sensitive emulsion is coated, or on which an image can be formed by various transfer processes.

  • Installation

    An artwork comprised of many and various elements of miscellaneous materials (see mixed media), light and sound, which is conceived for and occupies an entire space, gallery or site. The viewer can often enter or walk around the installation. Installations may only exist as long as they are installed, but can be re-created in different sites. Installation art emerged in the 1960s out of Environmental Art (works of art which are three-dimensional environments), but it was not until the 1970s that the term came into common use and not until the late 1980s that artists started to specialise in this kind of work, creating a genre of ‘Installation Art’. The term can also be applied to the arrangement of selected art works in an exhibition.

  • Sculpture

    A three-dimensional work of art. Such works may be carved, modelled, constructed, or cast. Sculptures can also be described as assemblage, in the round, relief, and made in a huge variety of media. Contemporary practice also includes live elements, as in Gilbert & George 'Living Sculpture' as well as broadcast work, radio or sound sculpture.