Emily Young: Pareidolia in Stone
Past exhibition
Overview
Richard Green in association with Willoughby Gerrish are pleased to present ‘Emily Young: Pareidolia in Stone’. The exhibition will focus on new work by Emily Young who is the leading free-carver in stone of her generation in Britain.
Richard Green has traditionally focussed on fine paintings, from the Old Masters to Modern British and European, including contemporary abstract and figurative art as well as Modern British sculptors with international reputations, namely Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, William Turnbull and Elisabeth Frink. To this group can now be added Emily Young, the only living artist among them, whose career has been on an impressive upward trajectory over recent years.
Young’s powerful evocative free carvings in reclaimed uncut natural stone from around the world, found in abandoned quarries and stone yards in Italy and the UK, are now frequently cast in bronze. They are completely distinctive in the way that it is nature's work as creator that takes centre stage. They evoke ancient figures from an unknown mythology, as if excavated from the geological strata where they have lain buried for many millions of years. With poetic, finely finished features emerging from the rough uncut stone, they show the alliance between the geological history of deep time and the hand of a modern artist. For this exhibition of more than twenty-five new works at Richard Green, Young has selected a title borrowed from science, Pareidolia, which means the appearance of something known in something essentially different and distinct – for example, a face in clouds or rock formations shaped by natural erosion to resemble sculpted heads.
Art Historians have noted the use of Pareidolia in art by some of the great masters, including Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Giotto and Arcimboldo, as well as leading surrealists Magritte, Ernst and Dalí. But these are primarily painters who relate their work to the phenomenon which they observe. In Young’s case, the starting point is the actual material she works with (e.g., uncut onyx or marble), looking closely at the natural formations in and on the surface of the stone, and being guided by them to choose how to proceed into it in search of a form. “When I look at the stone I know what it is...I look for the sense of its age and quietness and its stillness.” Stone itself is the teacher.
The result is not just a resemblance to a known form but suggestive of something much more philosophical. Her theme is, she says, the “marriage between the natural world and humanity”. In exploring this theme, she works in consciousness of environmental destruction, conservation issues, and the use of stone to tell the beautiful story of the planet's geological history, its longevity and humankind's dream of a healthy planet. A catalogue will be published with a forward written by Dr Antonia Boström, Director of Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, formerly Senior Curator and Head of the Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Sculpture (2004).
Exhibition Catalogue