Gallery’s goal to carve city a niche in art world

The London-based journalists needed the help of someone from Wakefield to actually make it to the press launch of the Hepworth yesterday.

Put onto a train in the capital by a delegate, specially-arranged coaches ferried them from Wakefield station. There was a sense that without being shepherded to the country’s newest gallery they might not have made it at all.

One suspects if they want to visit the largest purpose-built gallery outside of London in future, they won’t need a chaperone. The feeling yesterday was that the stature of the Hepworth Wakefield and the quality of the work it will show will bring them – and many more visitors from around the country – to the city over the coming years.

The opening of the £35m gallery has been long-awaited and with its opening, Yorkshire has taken another step towards cementing its place as the country’s capital for sculpture and a must-visit county for anyone with an interest in the art form.

“There now exists a triangle between the Hepworth Wakefield, the Henry Moore Institute and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park which makes us the county with the strongest offer in terms of sculpture in the UK,” said Simon Wallis, director of the Hepworth Wakefield.

As he watched visitors pile into the gallery – journalists from national and international media were invited yesterday ahead of the public opening on Saturday – Wallis could barely contain his excitement. He was appointed in 2008 and this moment has been a long time coming, with the gallery more than a decade in the planning.

“I am delighted to see the interest and it’s great to see people in here experiencing the works of art. It is wonderful to see the spaces populated. This is the first time I’ve been able to take anyone round without saying, ‘this isn’t quite finished yet’. More than anything I love seeing people in it, they are what really bring the building to life.”

Antony Gormley, the Angel of the North sculptor, was not at yesterday’s launch, but he did want to echo the words of Wallis, writing to him to say: “The Hepworth Wakefield will become a place of pilgrimage for all lovers of sculpture. Yorkshire will be a place of inspiration for all.”

Yorkshire will also, through the new gallery, be able to reclaim one of its most famous artist daughters. Wallis told the assembled audience yesterday that just this week he came across someone who didn’t know that Barbara Hepworth hailed from Wakefield.

While Henry Moore is synonymous with the county from which he was hewn, because Hepworth spent the latter part of her adult life in Cornwall she has become more associated with the southern beauty spot, rather than the Broad Acres’ rough landscape which truly shaped her.

Hepworth will in future be forever linked to her the city of her birth, thanks to the gallery which has taken her name.

The new gallery will provide a permanent home for the collection of Hepworth’s work already owned by the city as well a place to display a gift of over 40 works donated by her family that provides a unique insight into the artist’s working methods. The gift features a collection of prototypes and models, the majority are original plasters on which Hepworth worked with her own hands.

Hepworth’s granddaughter Dr Sophie Bowness was at the gallery launch yesterday and agreed that her grandmother’s work was now in the right place.

“We have found the ideal home for the plasters in Wakefield, the city in which Barbara was born and grew up,” she said.

The palpable thrill in the air yesterday at the gallery opening was on all sides. The representatives of the gallery and the city were delighted to have so many high-profile visitors, who likewise seemed genuinely impressed with what they were shown.

As well as the Hepworth collection, the gallery will display key works from the Wakefield collection by artists including Epstein, Paul Nash and Lowry.Loans from The Tate, the Arts Council and the British Council will supplement those along with loans from private collections.

The gallery is also home to 650 square metres of temporary exhibition space, which makes the Hepworth one of the largest contemporary art spaces outside of London.

Internationally-acclaimed Eva Rothschild was selected as the first artist to exhibit in the space. Her collection, Hot Touch, is the first in an on-going programme of major exhibitions by contemporary artists.

Rothschild was previously the recipient of the Duveens commission, which sees an artist create a piece of work for Tate Britain.

She said it was an enormous honour to be asked to be the first artist to show in the Hepworth.The gallery is the culmination of over a decade of planning and a development that puts culture at the heart of the regeneration of the somewhat beleaguered city of Wakefield.

The £35m gallery site is part of a £100m regeneration of the city’s waterfront which will include the restoration of a former mill and warehouse buildings.

With 5,000 square metres of gallery space, the Hepworth Wakefield is the largest purpose- built art gallery to open in Britain since the Hayward on London’s South Bank in 1968.

Architect Sir David Chipperfield is the mastermind behind the gallery which is a complex collection of ten individually-sized blocks. One side of the building sits in the water of the River Calder and can be seen from the motorway.

Council leader Coun Peter Box referenced the fact that the building has attracted some controversy locally.

He said: “This has been a long time in the making, but when I became leader of the council it was clear that Wakefield needed to invest in regeneration and have culture at the centre of that.

“I have heard the opinion that it looks like a bunker. I think it is a wonderful building and any controversy created on the streets of Wakefield, well, I defy anybody to come into this building and not be amazed by what we have here.”

Sir David was bullish when it came to defending his architectural plans for the building during a tour he led of the gallery, saying he was incredibly proud of what had been achieved in the city.

He said: “Wakefield should be really proud that it has been able to come up with a huge new public building. These things don’t come naturally, as architects this is our job – we are used to the frustrations of pulling a building together, but with local councils and councillors it isn’t their experience so to do something like this and to deliver it to a community and run a public cultural centre like this is an incredible step for a city.”

An incredible step, perhaps, but the issue of public funding was bound to raise its head at the launch of a £35m new building.

The money for the Hepworth has come from a variety of sources including Wakefield Council, the Hepworth Estate, the Arts Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Coun Box argued that while today’s economic climate might find questions raised over public money spent on a new cultural building, the decision to create the Hepworth came ten years ago. There was also the argument put forward that such a cultural behemoth in the city will attract tourism income and has already seen £350m of other investment made in the Waterfront area of the city in development.

As the London visitors climbed back on their buses to head to the city station and back to the capital, it was with a clear sense that there is a building of a critical mass of culture in and around Wakefield and the Hepworth will most likely see those visitors make a return to the city soon.

[email protected]

The Hepworth Wakefield opens to the public on Saturday.

For a special report see www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/video