Hepworth's work is coming home to put city firmly on the cultural map

It's fair to say that in the UK arts world Sir Nicholas Serota is at the top of the tree. The director of the Tate, which means he is in charge of four world-class venues, Sir Nicholas is one of the most important names in UK culture. So when he heaped praise on a new gallery about to open in Yorkshire, it was a genuine accolade.

"After he had a look around, he got everyone together who is working on the building and who will be working here when we open and said, 'Do you know how lucky you are? Do you realise what a wonderful place you have here?'," says Simon Wallis, director of the Hepworth Wakefield. "He was really impressed by the place and it was really heartening to get that kind of endorsement."

Sir Nicholas was enthusing about Yorkshire's newest gallery, which is in the last straight of a seven-year journey from concept to reality.

Although eight months away from being opened to the public, the Yorkshire Post was invited to take a look around the Hepworth Wakefield.

It has been designed by David Chipperfield Architects – Chipperfield won British architecture's highest honour the RIBA Stirling Prize for his design for the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, Germany in 2007.

The new building will house the most extensive collection of work in Britain by Wakefield-born sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth.

Standing partly in the River Calder, south of Wakefield city centre, the new development is clearly going to be controversial – it's not a building that will be easily missed and it makes a bold statement. At 5,000sq ft, it is the largest purpose-built gallery outside London and boasts 10 separate exhibition spaces.

"It is going to make this area of the city very exciting, a really dynamic place to be," says Wallis.

Most visitors to the gallery will cross the River Calder over a metal bridge, a journey on foot reminiscent of the approach visitors can take over the Thames towards Tate Modern in London. Although clearly much smaller in scale, Wallis agrees that the drama associated with that river crossing will be felt equally by the 150,000-plus people expected to visit the new gallery annually.

The Hepworth is still very much a work in progress and, while the outside of the building is largely finished, there is still much to do on the interior.

As Wallis begins the tour, we both realise he has missed out one important aspect. Arriving via the car park behind the building, we haven't had the chance to enjoy the walk that the thousands who cross the bridge once the building opens, will experience. So out we go into the cold and take that journey. "It's dramatic, isn't it?" says Wallis.

The building is a collection of differently-sized trapezium blocks. From above it looks like a bizarre jigsaw, from ground level, it simply looks impressive. "It's a very muscular looking building and it looks really quite imposing."

A graduate of Manchester University, Wallis also studied at Chelsea School of Art and in Chicago, before working as a curator in Cambridge, then at Tate Liverpool. He went on to become director at the Chisenhale Gallery in London before winning the position

in Wakefield.

Entrenched until recently in the London art world, he is able to put his optimism to one side momentarily and consider how the gallery might be viewed from within that rarefied circle.

Even with Sir Nicholas visiting and giving his ringing endorsement to the Hepworth, there is no escaping the fact that Wakefield is a beleaguered city. In the Wakefield district, 34 per cent of people live in areas that are among the 10 per cent most deprived wards in England.

Caught between Leeds and Sheffield, it suffers by comparison from those cities, sharing neither the financial kudos of its cousin to the north, nor the cultural cachet of the city a little to the south.

The Hepworth, Wallis believes, can help to change all that.

"At the minute, it's true (that when) I talk to many colleagues in London they don't know where Wakefield is. They haven't heard of it," says Wallis. "But when you talk about Barbara Hepworth and the fact that the architects are David Chipperfield, people realise it is going to be big news.

"I think the message is starting to get out that something exciting is happening here. There has been a shift in the infrastructure of the art world over the past 15 years, with major venues in Middlesbrough and Walsall and Liverpool opening, which I think has meant that people are able to look outside of the capital and recognise that there are significant places beyond London. The major advantage Wakefield has is that it is so easy to reach – it's two hours from London and can be visited very easily from the North."

The Hepworth is not just about art and culture. The building sits within the Waterfront Wakefield development, and is a key part of the future regeneration of the city. Wakefield Council is a major funder of the 35m development, with other substantial sums coming from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England.

"Culture is one of the key ways in which you can change a city's identity both for people within the city and the perception of people from the outside," says Wallis."If a city can insert itself into the international cultural economy, it has enormous benefits."

It might sound a little ambitious – Rome, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Wakefield – but if you examine the picture, it becomes surprisingly attainable.

Barbara Hepworth, like that sculptor son of Yorkshire Henry Moore, spent much of her adult life living away from the county of her birth. But Yorkshire is indelibly printed on all her work.

While not as celebrated as her spiritual and artistic brother Moore, in no small part due to gender politics, the new building will redress that imbalance.

Already the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds attracts international audiences, who come to study at the centre's library and to see genuinely world-class exhibitions.

Immediately south of Wakefield is the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, another cultural behemoth that has an international reputation. If these were not enough to draw sculpture fans to the region, the addition of this new building will make it essential.

The gallery will also, Wallis hopes, give local people the opportunity to see the works of Hepworth, many for the first time.

Wallis says: "We have inherited the collection from the old Wakefield Arts Gallery and the estate of Hepworth has given us a gift of 40 sculptures that have never been publicly exhibited before.

"The space will allow us to look at her work and celebrate, but also to look at her contemporaries and how her work has influenced artists working in sculpture today."

Another fted name to see an early exhibition at the Hepworth is Eva Rothschild.

There is one inescapable question. The building looks impressive, the interiors and the gallery spaces have been designed to show off the varied work that will sit within them as well as possible, and Sir Nicholas Serota hopes the people of Yorkshire will quickly discover this gem on their doorsteps. However, at 35m and in the current climate, is this a necessity or an unaffordable luxury?

Wallis is a believer in culture being well worth the money we spend on it.

"I don't think it is a terrible time to be opening something like this, because there is a huge amount of energy and optimism around what we are doing," says Wallis.

"Culture is a proven central part of creating the right conditions for success and I think that the investment we are seeing here in Wakefield is going to pay enormous dividends in so many different ways."