Exhibitions & Collection programme for 2015

This will be the largest presentation of Benglis’ work in the UK, featuring approximately 50 works, spanning the entirety of her prolific career to date. Aged 73, Benglis is one of America’s most significant living artists. Heralded as the ‘heir to Pollock’ by Life magazine in 1970, she emerged as part of an artistic generation forging new approaches to sculpture and painting in the wake of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Pop Art.

Taking the permanent display of Barbara Hepworth’s 44 plasters and prototypes as a starting point, this exhibition will explore the medium and changing uses of plaster over the past 300 years, from the 18th-19th century teaching casts of classical sculpture, to the work of contemporary artists. Works from the Wakefield Council Art Collection will be on display alongside loans from the Royal Academy and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Works by artists including Barbara Hepworth and her contemporaries including Jean Arp, Ben Nicholson and Kurt Schwitters will also be on display.

Complementing the major Tate Britain Barbara Hepworth exhibition, this show picks up the story of Hepworth’s work from 1965 until 1975, the last 10 years of her extraordinary life.  The last decade of Hepworth’s life was extremely prolific: former Tate Director Sir Alan Bowness, Hepworth’s son-in-law and biographer, noted that nearly as many works were made during the 1960s as between 1925 and 1960. By this point, Hepworth had achieved international recognition and this exhibition looks at the new ideas and processes that these successes afforded her opportunity to explore.

This small exhibition offers an insight into Barbara Hepworth’s early years in Yorkshire.  Born in 1903 in Wakefield, Hepworth spent her formative years in West Yorkshire and this display reasserts the ongoing inspiration of the Yorkshire landscape in her artistic development. Archival material, work relating to her family and childhood, early drawings, paintings and sculptures will be on display, as well as photographic images of Yorkshire commissioned by Hepworth.

The Hepworth Wakefield in partnership with nearby Yorkshire Sculpture Park present the first major exhibition of work by seminal British artist Anthony Caro since his death in 2013.  The first Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle joint exhibition, the show will be the UK premiere of several of Caro’s Last Sculptures. Recognised internationally as one of Britain’s most significant sculptors, Caro was a former studio assistant to Henry Moore and is seen as being a formidable artist who constantly innovated and pushed the boundaries of sculpture.

Dutch artist Magali Reus will create a new body of work to be exhibited at The Hepworth Wakefield’s new 600sqm space The Calder. This will be Reus’ first UK institutional exhibition, following recent presentations at the Kestnergesellschaft in Hannover and Fridericianum in Kassel. Opening alongside the major collaborative Anthony Caro exhibitions at The Hepworth Wakefield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Reus’ exhibition provides a dialogue with the eminent British sculptor’s work, which has been hugely inspirational to her practice.

Des Hughes will using The Hepworth Wakefield archives to uncover the journey of Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure, after it was removed from its public installation outside the civic centre in Castleford, following fears that the sculpture would be stolen.  An exhibition of Hughes’ research and creative processes, an intervention by Hughes into the Wakefield Council Art Collection will be on display at The Hepworth Wakefield with a new pair of public sculptures, to be situated outside Castleford Academy and The Hepworth Wakefield respectively.

British born artist Gertrude Hermes was one of the most highly acclaimed British print-makers of her generation, contemporary of Hepworth and friend of Henry Moore.  This retrospective is the first British survey of her sculptures, prints, preparatory drawings, sketchbooks and private press books in 30 years offers a compelling insight into this largely overlooked artist.

The Hepworth Wakefield presents the first UK solo exhibition since Enrico David received his Turner Prize nomination in 2009.  Working across a wide range of media – paintings, sculpture, textiles and installation, this exhibition will feature newly-commissioned work conceived for the gallery’s David Chipperfield-designed, light-filled spaces.