Environmentalism and ecology coalesce in Emily Young’s (b.1951) sculptures, and are brought together by her preoccupation with lost historical landscapes, ancient and allegorical narratives, and cross-cultural creation myths which take striking sculptural form. Her work is thus shaped by interlocking and interdependent structures, through which she critically explores notions of embodiment and identity, consciousness and reflective interiority. Young uses what she describes as ‘the most basic of earth’s materials’ to depict her fascination with the relationship between the inherent beauty and tragedy of humanity, and seeks further answers from texts as diverse as anthropology, philosophy, and poetry, archaeology, psychology, geology and astronomy. Young fits into a broader cluster of artists who in successive generations have used carving to distinguish their work from other sculptors, despite which she remains unique within this group. Her predecessors include Henry Moore (1898-1986), Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), and Frank Dobson (1886-1963) but, in contrast, Young looks decisively to former societies and cultures to address current ecological anxieties and developing environmental issues.

Heralded as ‘Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor’, Young has unwittingly been tasked with carrying a mantle first awarded to Hepworth, Moore, and Epstein and yet this association undermines Young’s individual contribution to the history of British stone carvers. There is a harmony in the relationship between carvers and their stone, a calmness captured for Young, especially, in the depiction of a human face – ‘one person looks at a piece of stone that has been given a human face and then they will feel the stillness and the ancientness of the stone’. It is from this artistic perspective that Young’s sculptures have been defined as ‘modernist to the core in humanist impulse’, reconciling ‘time, nature, and memory with man’s relationship to the Earth’. Sculptors of natural stone occupy a unique place, suggests Fortey, as they mediate between the human and geological realms, reinterpreting the inconceivably slow erosion of the Earth as a metaphor for our own collective mortality. Young’s sculptures could, therefore, serve as sombre memorials to the planet’s formation and continuous evolution, as they capture the cycles of erosion and turbulence, shifting tectonic plates, and volatile climactic conditions that the Earth’s volcanic past bears witness to. Yet there is also an urgency to Young’s work in that she employs the materiality of the stone to stimulate further discussions around current environmental and ecological issues. ‘Stone is our earthly ancestor, and we are its children’, asserts Young, suggesting that within this relationship there too lies a deeply ingrained sense of ancestry, endurance and preservation where one element is inseparable from the other.

Young’s work is exhibited in permanent installations and public collections worldwide. These include, Anglo American, London; Cloister of Madonna dell’Orto, Venice; La Défense, Paris; Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA), Chicago; Loyola University, Rome; Neo Bankside, London; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; Paternoster Square, St Paul’s Cathedral, London; Salisbury Cathedral, Sailsbury; Standard Life, Edinburgh; St James’ Church, Piccadilly, London; St Pancras Church, London; The David Robert’s Art Foundation, London; The Imperial War Museum, London; The National Bank of Luxembourg, Luxembourg; The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester; University of Notre Dame, Chicago; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.