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Sculptor of vision

Andrew Lambirth

Wednesday, 16th April 2008

Nigel Hall: Sculpture + Drawing 1965–2008
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, until 8 June

The early concern with leaning-back trance-like figures, light bulbs, trailing flexes, windows and rooms gradually gave way to more abstract preoccupations. The ‘Three Silent Shapes’ of a Sixties sculpture pointed the way forward to a greater involvement in line and geometry, which resulted in the wall pieces made from rafts and extended lengths of painted aluminium tubing. An example here, ‘Cave No 10’, hangs at the far end of the Garden Gallery, with one of Hall’s dramatically (im)pure circle drawings. Here, too, are a couple of dark 1970s charcoal drawings, the paper mostly black, and a bronze from the 1990s, ‘Narrow Fex Valley’. Hall has always identified and disclosed the geometry in his surroundings, and since his discovery of the Mojave Desert in 1967 the landscape has played an increasingly important role in his work. Despite the strange design of the Garden Gallery, with diagonal props holding up an ancient wall (the building was once a cart lodge), Hall’s work looks well here. Particularly in the far end of the space, which is largely given over to a group of his book drawings, evocative linear arrangements based on the internal structure of passages of prose or poetry he admires.

Outside there are sculptures to be seen in the landscape. If you return to the terrace beyond the main galleries, the principal piece here is ‘Slow Motion’ (2001), composed of six standing ovals in two tiers, made in steel painted a delicate pearly grey. It’s a splendid sculpture which regroups itself as you move around it — sometimes an oval will stand alone, or elements will overlap to give a completely different reading. It looks good both close to and from a distance, and holds the eye as the visitor traverses this area of formal garden, down to a pond in which ‘Soglio VI’ (1996) is sited on a base, taking watery reflections on its rusted corten steel surface in soothing, flickering rhythms. Nearby are the large black square-ish structure (usually at Essex University) entitled ‘Views of the Interior’ (1992), dealing with the literal bracketing — note the shape of parentheses here — of interior and exterior space; also ‘Kiss’ (2000) in cherry red, lurking romantically under the trees; ‘Stretched/Compressed’ (2006), a smaller comb piece sited at the end of the terrace; and ‘Venetian Twist’ (2007) in phosphor bronze, a gorgeously elegant love-knot, or variant on the symbol for eternity.