EMILY YOUNG FRBS

Born London 1951

Ref: CL 3783

                                               

Solar Disc IV / III, 2011

 

Onyx (Calcite): 27 ½ in / 70 cm diameter

Carved in 2011

 

 

 

Geology notes:

 

The crystal growth pattern shown in this piece is formed by calcite rich water that falls and settles horizontally in sedimentary layers over many hundreds of thousands of years. Perhaps in a cave, where water drips down, or on the bottom of a lake. The colours change as the dusts and minerals from the upper world are washed down over the long passage of time. The stone slowly grows around the microscopic particles of calcite giving this piece its particular nature. 

 

Literature:

Jon Wood, Emily Young, Stone Carvings and Paintings, Lund Humphries, London 2024, illus. in colour p.198

 

‘Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor’ Financial Times

 

Emily Young was born in London in 1951 into a family which included writers, artists, politicians, naturalists and explorers. Her grandmother was the sculptor Kathleen Scott, a colleague of Auguste Rodin, and her uncle Peter Scott, started the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in 1961. As a young woman, she worked primarily as a painter, studying briefly at Chelsea School of Art and Central Saint Martins in London, and Stonybrook University, New York. She left London in the late 60s, and spent the next years travelling widely, studying art and culture. In the early 1980s she started carving in stone, preferring to use discarded materials from abandoned quarries. The primary objective of her sculpture is to bring humankind and the living planet into a consciously closer conjunction. Our relationship has been clouded over time by millennia of fantasies about the nature of power and human privilege over nature. To experience the natural beauty, geological history and subtle energy of stone, including its unique capacity to embody human creativity over long periods, is a part of the changing story of human consciousness, and the understanding of our nature, in time and space. We can imagine our history both backwards to the creation of our universe and forwards into the future of a vast, unknowable universe. Her approach allows the viewer to comprehend a commonality across centuries, geography and cultures. Her preoccupation is our troubled relationship with the planet. In her combination of traditional carving skills allied with technology where necessary, she produces timeless works which marry the contemporary with the ancient, manifesting a unique, serious and poetic presence. They are, each one, a call to thoughtfulness, looking to the future. She has exhibited at many prestigious museums including: The Getty, California; The Imperial War Museum, London; The Whitworth, Manchester; The Meijer Sculpture Gardens, Grand Rapids, and in 2018, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Emily Young’s work is in public and private collections throughout the world. She currently divides her time between studios in the UK and Italy.

 

Solo exhibitions

2024

60th Venice Biennale

2023

Pareidolia in Stone, Richard Green, London

 

Willoughby Gerrish / Thirsk Hall Sculpture Garden, Thirsk, North Yorkshire

2021

Carving in Time, Willoughby Gerrish in Association with Tomasso Gallery, London

2019/20

Bowman Sculpture, London

2019

Museo della Tartuca, Siena

2018

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

2018

New College, Oxford

2017

Victoria Beckham / Emily Young, Dover Street, London

2017/18

Bowman Sculpture, London

2017

St James’s Church, Piccadilly

2016

Bowman Sculpture, London

2015

Call & Response, Cloister of Madonna Dell’Orto, Venice, coinciding with the 56th Venice Biennale

Stone From the Mountain, The Fine Art Society, Edinburgh

2014

Cassandra / Earth II, Berkeley Square, London

Emily Young: Four Heads, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

2013

We are Stone’s Children, Cloister of Madonna Dell’Orto, Venice, coinciding with the 55th Venice Biennale

2012

Lithica, Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh

The Metaphysics of Stone, Berkeley Square

2011

Emily Young at Neo Bankside, South Bank, London       

The Maremma Heads, The Fine Art Society, London

2010

Microcosms, Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh

2009

Angels and Archangels, Salisbury Cathedral, Salisbury

Teardrop, The Fine Art Society, London

2008

Singing Stone, Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh

2007

The Fine Art Society, London

2006

The Crypt, St Pancras Church, London

2005

The Fine Art Society, London

2004

The Crypt, St Pancras Church, London

2003

Kew Gardens, Richmond, London

2002

Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh

2001

Leighton House Museum, London

1999

Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh

1997

Recent Stone Carvings, The Fine Art Society, London

 

 

Selected Group Exhibitions

 

 

2019

Frieze Sculpture Park, London

2017

Frieze Sculpture Park, London

2017

Rodin and the Contemporary Figuration Tradition, The Meijer Sculpture Gardens, Grand Rapids

2016

Beyond Limits, Sotheby’s at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire

2015

The Violet Crab, David Robert’s Art Foundation, London

2013

Carving in Britain since 1910, The Fine Art Society, London

Messerschmidt and Modernity, The J. Paul Getty Foundation, California

2012

The British Cut, The Space, Hong Kong

2011

The Figure in the Landscape, The Garden Gallery, Wiltshire

2007

Art at the Rockface, Norwich Castle and Sheffield Millennium Galleries

 

Public and private collections of note:

Artemis, London

The Crypt, St Pancras New Church, London

David Robert’s Art Foundation, London

Imperial War Museum, London

Neo Bankside, South Bank, London

Paternoster Square, St Paul’s Cathedral, London

The Whitworth, University of Manchester

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

La Défense, Paris

Loyola University, Rome

Cloister of Madonna Dell’Orto, Venice

Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago

 

Solar Disc IV / III, 2011

Medium: Medium