Laura Ellen Bacon: Into Being at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

YSP‘s Chapel space is currently transformed by Laura Ellen Bacon and her new sculptural installation Into Being. The artist works exclusively with natural materials and has created a site-specific piece that weaves around the building, softening its corners with the curves of willow.

Bacon creates sculptures in and around existing structures, from buildings to larger landscapes. She describes them as, in some ways, being the hosts that her forms can grow upon. Originally inspired by bird and insect nests, the process of inserting an organic form into a more rigid space is an important element of Bacon’s process.

She works with willow: a warm, pliable and sustainable material. For Into Being, Bacon used around 80 bundles of Somerset willow called Dicky Meadows, chosen for their slender and straight stem, while fallen branches from the YSP grounds were used to form the skeleton of the sculpture.

The artist draws the shapes in the space, and while she creates preparatory sketches with a rough idea of the form, the final shape appears during the process of weaving, directed by the material itself.

In Bacon’s words: “My work is also focused on the human, physical experience within woven spaces or ‘burrows’ – although I joyously admit that the immersive process and the almost primitive nesting instinct it releases means that the main recipient of the experience is me.”

The installation, which took eight weeks to create, encroaches six metres into the nave of the Chapel and climbs three metres up the wall – it’s large enough to make the viewer feel cocooned in its folds, resembling a burrow or a den. In fact, at the end of the exhibition, the sculpture will be dismantled so that the material can be reused in the local landscape to create wildlife habitats.

Bacon’s meticulously handmade sculptures, like some of the best contemporary art of today, hover between fine art and craft. Perhaps even more importantly, the artist challenges the notion of ‘women’s work’ that takes place in the home through the sheer scale and weight of her works, on which she also usually works alone.

Laura Ellen Bacon: Into Being fits perfectly in both the physical venue and the larger ethos of YSP as an organisation at the intersection of art and nature. It’s a multi-sensory experience for even the youngest visitors and makes for the perfect spring day out for the whole family.