An art project that took 32 years to complete?

I recently visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park – click here for a link to YSP – (just off the M1 near Wakefield), where there is a permanent sculpture collection set in a glorious landscape.  YSP also have an ambitious temporary exhibition every year, with site specific sculptures created, usually huge in scale, that often look as though the belong in the landscape and have been there for years.  The current exhibition, a retrospective of sculptor David Nash’s work, (on until 27 February 2011) was the most poetic and moving sculpture exhibition I have ever been to.  It is hard to convey why in words.  The majority of his recent work centres on working with large felled tree trunks.  He used to paint the surface of the sculptures he carved from them, but felt the layer of colour on the surface lacked integrity, so now imbues tone, well – black – into his sculptures, by charring them into the blackest state they could be in without collapsing entirely.  See below.

For me the most poetic piece was the room that took me on a 32 year journey.  This contained 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 room is full of sketches of a wooden boulder in various states and places, and a large charcoal map charts the boulders progress from the mountains of Wales to the sea.  Nash carved the boulder near his studio and then launched it into a stream, at first intending to get it, via the stream, to his studio.  Instead he decided to allow the narrative to unfold.  The boulder began its 32 year journey to the sea.  Nash filmed it through its journey, until enventually it is lost in waves in the sea.  I took a friend with me to see the show who confessed not to understand or value abstract art, yet he was mesmerised by this twenty minute film.  It is poetry in motion.