Emily Young at Thirsk Sculpture Park | Conversations in stone

Emily Young (b. 1951), Speleothem Head, 2022, Onyx, 7 7/8 x 4 1/8 x 7 1/8 in, 20 x 10.5 x 18 cm. Image credit: Angelo Plantamura. Courtesy of Willoughby Gerrish

Emily Young, ‘Britain’s greatest living land sculptor’ (FT), talks about having a friendship, even a marriage, with every bit of stone she works with, whether that’s Onyx or Speleothem, or Jaisalmer, or Quartzite, or Calacatta, or Lapis or Alabaster.

“Stones talk,” she says. “When I go to a quarry, or a stone yard, some of them say: ‘Hello! Hey, I’m interesting! Me, me, me!’, and I say: ‘Hmm, OK, you want to talk to me. You want to play’.”

She gets these pieces transported to her work-yard, in her converted monastery home in the hills of Southern Tuscany, and their relationship flowers. She chips and chisels and hammers and grinds, working with the stone, rather than at it, or on it. “I don’t anticipate exactly what will happen,” she says. “It lets me know what I can do.” Every outcome is very different, because every piece of stone is very different: she delights in working with the veins, and the faults, and the cracks she discovers.

Sometimes a rounded torso emerges; sometimes a smooth planet-like disc. But, mostly, it’s a face. “I find a place in the stone,” she says, “where the face will show stillness, thoughtfulness, reflection, contemplation.” Often the human features are encircled by jaggedy, unworked stone, bringing to mind Michelangelo’s Prisoners.

 Young classes herself as an environmental artist: ‘the primary objective of [my] sculpture brings the relationship of humankind and the planet into closer conjunction,’ she tells us. ‘The natural beauty of stone, including its capacity to embody human consciousness, can endure into the future of a vast, unknowable universe.’ Is her work, then, a memento mori, of sorts? Civilisations collapse; sculptures persist. The evolution and extinction of mankind will constitute a mere moment in the life of a rock.

Young is represented by Willoughby Gerrish, who showed two of her pieces at British Art Fair 2022, both featuring faces emerging from hunks of Portuguese Rose Marble. Earth Dreamer I acted as a harbinger for the Fair, poised on a plinth on Duke of York Square near the entrance to Saatchi Gallery; its sister sculpture Earth Dreamer II sold on the first day, for a cool £300,000. Willoughby Gerrish run Thirsk Sculpture Park, near York, and until July 3 are displaying the biggest exhibition of Young’s work ever held in the North of England, with over 20 pieces on show, both in their main gallery, and in their 20-acre sculpture garden. Prices range from £20,000 to £300,000. The show runs until July 3; the outdoor works will stay for the year.

Thirsk Sculpture Park, Weds-Sat, 11am-5pm | willoughbygerrish.com