Photo by Jonty Wilde. Courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Exhibition preview - Nigel Hall: Sculpture + Drawings 1965 - 2008 at Underground Gallery, Garden Gallery and open air, Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield, until June 8 2008.

Work spanning four decades are being reassessed through an extensive survey of sculpture and works on paper at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Nigel Hall’s work reflects his understanding of space and explores how it may be occupied by sculptural object and viewer, or enveloped and bisected by line.

Photo by Jonty Wilde. Courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Visitors to the exhibition will even enter the Underground Gallery through one of Hall’s installations, Magnet (1966), fulfilling the artist’s desire to create sculptural spaces that can be physically entered.

Several pieces of his work will be shown outside at the Sculpture Park, including Crossing (horizontal) and Crossing (vertical), two major Corten steel sculptures from 2006, which are respectively ten metres long and high.

Photo by Jonty Wilde. Courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Also on display will be a collection of his notes and sketches acquired over 40 years and inspired by his love of landscapes. After a visit to the Mojave Desert in 1967 his work became increasingly abstract, due to the effect the space and geometry of the landscape in America had on him.

During this time his work was often made with aluminium and suspended from the ceiling. Then in the mid 80s he shifted to creating more solid structures, though always with a constant pre-occupation with space.