In the current exhibition at Richard Green gallery, twenty-seven new works by Emily Young evoke ancient figures from an unknown mythology - as if excavated from the geological strata where they have remained buried for millions of years.
Presented in association with the art dealer and consultant Willoughby Gerrish, this exhibition of Young’s work demonstrates her ability to bring about an alliance between the geological history of deep time and the hand of a modern artist. Her exquisite and mysterious heads with their refined and polished features emerge from rough uncut rock, and her smooth torsos seem to have slipped out of the rock to stand serenely alone.
“Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor … her sculptures meditate on time, nature, memory, man’s relationship to the Earth” - Jackie Wullschlager, Financial TimesEmily Young is the leading free-carver in stone of her generation in Britain. For this exhibition she has borrowed a title from science - “Pareidolia” - describing the innate desire to read something known where no such thing exists, for example when seeing a face in the clouds.
Young’s starting point for each work is simply the material - for example a piece of onyx or marble - at which she looks closely at the natural formations in and on the surface of the stone, and is guided by them on how to proceed in search of the final 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” - YoungAs well as an artist Young is part-explorer and part-geologist, drawing on her expert knowledge to select each piece of stone, as well as writing her own geological notes on each work for the catalogue. She finds these raw materials - marbles, limestone and red travertine from Italy, onyx from Morocco, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan - in stone-yards, on hillsides near her Tuscan home, and in ancient and historic quarries like Carrara.
The works in the exhibition emerge from their original form to embody their own mysterious spirit, a spirit at one with the ages of materials measured in millions of years which will outlast us all. As the artist says, this reminds us that “we are children of a magical planet, which gives life and meaning to everything”.
Emily Young was born in London in 1951 into an adventurous family of writers, artists and explorers. She studied life drawing and painting seriously from the age of twelve. In her later travels through Europe, Asia and the Americas she discovered a fascination with stone, its history and humankind's relationship with it, and in the early 1980s she turned fully to sculpture after a fellow artist left some stone and masonry tools in her house. She now lives and works between her studios in Tuscany and Dorset.
Young’s sculptures are held in private and public collections worldwide. Her work has been exhibited internationally in museums, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, California; the Imperial War Museum, London; the Whitworth, Manchester; the Meijer Sculpture Gardens, Grand Rapids; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and Thirsk Hall, Yorkshire.
“EMILY YOUNG: PAREIDOLIA IN STONE” runs from 25 October to 17 November 2023 at Richard Green, 33 New Bond Street, London W1S 2RS, UK
Here are two short films where Emily talks about her life and work:
