A new spelling-binding exhibition set to open in Yorkshire
Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is set to open Rise, an ambitious exhibition by LR Vandy that brings together large-scale rope installations, figurative sculpture and wall-based works.
Set in The Weston Gallery and outdoors and opening on March 14, the title Rise references ideas of protest, liberation, resilience and collective joy, all explored through rituals and dance.
Working from her studio at the Historic Dockyard in Chatham, Kent – the only remaining original Royal Navy Ropeyard still in operation – she has developed a sustained engagement with rope as both a physical medium and carrier of historical meaning.
Vandy is interested in rope’s entanglement in human history, its role in the development of civilisations and its inextricable links to colonial enslavement of people.
An avid collector of curious and historical objects, she incorporates found and repurposed materials to explore processes of transformation, drawing attention to the social, economic and political systems embedded within everyday objects.
In her first solo museum exhibition, Vandy will transform The Weston Gallery into an immersive experience centred around a monumental rope maypole, A Call to Dance, created onsite at YSP.
Twisting and reaching upward, the maypole draws on longstanding traditions of communal gathering, ritual and seasonal renewal. The artist continues to draw on histories of dance and the joy of collective expression, both linked to maypoles, along with their lesser-known association as sites of resistance.
Surrounding this structure are other new works, primarily made on site, including two spinning-top-like structures appearing to be precariously balanced and extending to the gallery’s ceiling.
Reinforcing Vandy’s continued integration of the textile industry into her work, the forms are based on wooden spindles used in the spinning process. Embodying movement and rhythm, the spinning tops will be partially wrapped in rope and the circular form at the base will be filled using an old maritime industry technique of discarded masses of rope called ‘pudding’. Looping rope lengths will span the installation and will incorporate various cuffs and clamps that restrain the strands.
Other dancing figures of twisted and bound rope are suggestive of feminine forms. This energetic series, initiated in 2024, incorporates carefully considered details including hair cuffs and bindings that reference the violent histories of the trade in enslaved people.
New wall-based mandalas and circular forms made using traditional weaving loom shuttles, coloured threads and other found objects, including a wooden ship wheel and barrel rings.
Rise features a deliberate colour palette: green represents harvest and land; pale blue and yellow represent the sky and sun; gold references the mining industry, exploitation and trade; red for blood; and rich blue connects to the sought after natural dye that is harvested from the indigo plant. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, indigo was the only means to achieve a deep blue colour for clothing and became a symbol of wealth and status in the Western upper classes. Its production depended on the exploitation of land and enslaved labour across India, West Africa and the Americas, and the toxic processes involved caused widespread illness and death.
The exhibition highlights process as much as outcome. Vandy will work on site alongside the YSP team and local fabricators to produce key elements of the installation, reinforcing YSP’s role as a centre for sculptural research, making and material experimentation. Drawing underpins her practice, but it is through working directly with rope, responding to its weight, resistance and inherent curve that forms emerge.
An outdoor sculptural work, Dancing in Time: The Ties That Bind Us, commissioned by National Museums Liverpool for the International Slavery Museum’s 2023 Martin Luther King Pop Up series, will now overlook YSP’s historic landscape. The five-metre-high rope structure crowned with willow will establish a dialogue between interior and exterior spaces and extends the exhibition’s exploration of movement, scale and collective presence across the landscape.
Vandy says: “YSP has provided me with a unique and exciting opportunity to create a site-specific installation – giving me the physical space to expand the scope of recurring themes and ideas within my practice.”
Rise is presented in collaboration with October Gallery and opens at YSP on Saturday March 14 until September 13.