Ross Clark – Artist

Visited the new Barbara Hepworth, Wakefield with my Grandad today.  Built by the architects David Chipperfield thegallery is a brilliant building, blending into it’s industrial surroundings but makinga positve statement about the history of the town.

The contents of the galleries are also pretty amazing, particularly the structures created for the plaster models of works that were later cast in bronze. The images of the wooden and metal straps on the larger scale sculptures really seem to define the form and shape within the structures themselves.

Visited the Ferens today with my parents and although the galleries were closed for the hanging of the open exhibition there was a really moving series of photographs by Colin Gray as part of his “The Parents” series begun in 1984. The series of works on exhibition chart his his mothers last years up to her death in 2004.

I found that the most moving images were the ones of his mother that captured her as a form of coloured shadow, fading ghostly presence, within the frame. These presences were of her hands or a distorted figure in the bath.