Ten years ago, some friends took us to meet someone who they had known for a long time. Her name was Sue Wright, and she lived in a small village near York with a garden which seemed to lead from one defined space to another. Her late husband’s sculptures could be discovered at various intervals and places in the garden and at one point she took us into the barn which had been his workshop. Plants were creeping in from the outside and entwining with remnants of farm tools and pieces of unfinished sculpture in aluminium, and the space had a sense of both intermittent human interaction and natural processes.

It was a wonderful afternoon. Our children, still small, were enchanted by the garden which seemed to go on forever, and we all felt very fortunate to have met Sue, who seemed to express experience and old age with such musicality and grace.

Sue’s late husband, Austin Wright, was a Yorkshire-based sculptor who we had admired for some time. His work has been very much in our minds recently, so the current exhibition at Thirsk Hall couldn’t be more timely.

A pivotal figure in British sculpture from the 1940s, Austin Wright (1911 – 1997), trod his own path, exploring and evolving his style and ideas in different materials and sketches. His work ultimately became at the same time figurative as well as abstract; structures which were inspired by botanical forms but which also embodied human anatomy.

In his early work he used wood which, when he received it, was often split down the middle as it had dried. This little split became a key idea, ‘The Secret Middle’, with the outside being an enclosure – almost like a garment – for ‘what was within…It is present in the body, the inner warmth is like this.’ This became an articulation of interior elasticity or fluidity, ‘out of which the tree grows’, within a crisp or more rigid exterior.

Wright continued to explore inner structures, whether of ruined buildings, the internal workings of a plant or the anatomical systems within a body and created works which responded to these concealed forms. He felt ruins returned a building to a state comparable to its appearance during construction and similarly with dried seed heads (images below of Figure (1942) and Seed Head (c1980) at the Thirsk Hall exhibition).

When I think of his work, I tend to think of the aluminium pieces, many of them suspended (as per the images below of works in the Thirsk Hall exhibition). These sculptures have what James Hamilton calls ‘a very slight physical presence…deriving their power from the space that they articulate and surround, rather than the space that they themselves occupy.’ Seemingly weightless due to the lightness of the aluminium, they seem to float like filaments of spun web yet also have presence and materiality.

Austin Wright absorbed and responded to the Yorkshire landscape – ‘It’s a region that you come to know: like a face, you cannot assess it in one look – you build it; it builds you.’ His workshop, when he first found it, was full of agricultural tools – many of them suspended – and these objects, each in their own way expressing a connection between the earth and the human, became part of his work. ‘I have always believed that artistically, the real thing is under your feet. You don’t need to go far. This seems much the most important thing. It’s ‘Here.’

(Additional images below from Austin Wright’s workshop, on the visit to meet Sue)

The current exhibition at Thirsk Hall Sculpture Park (until 29 March 2025, more images below) explores Wright’s work – both sculptural and on paper – and also includes a re-creation of his workshop which was in the barn near his house and which we were lucky enough to see when we met Sue. The exhibition gives a sense of a sculptor who, though very modest in many ways, quietly listened to his own emerging interests and preoccupations and responded without compromise.

The way in which Austin Wright articulated his instinct about the abstract relationship between botanical and figurative forms has inspired new thoughts about the design of the Ilkley fountain. That this design has evolved over a long period seems to bear out his words about both the encountering and the making of an artwork being ‘a journey in time as well as in space.’

We have also reflected on Austin Wright’s words about the welding of shapes. He talks about welding two shapes together so that they can’t part, and how the weld itself is a vital element of the work, accounting for the strength of the whole structure. At a crucial point in the fabrication of the fountain, we have really learned from these words.

One comment he made feels particularly resonant: “Whatever stage you see an anatomical figure or a form, its importance is equal to any other stage. All fragments are important.” 

It is very special to us that Austin Wright’s family is supportive of our work and that the Estate has become one of the keystone donors of the Ilkley Fountain.

Quotes from Austin Wright are taken from the film ‘The Secret Middle’ (courtesy of the Yorkshire Film Archive), which was produced and directed by award-winning British screenwriter Harry Duffin in 1967. 

 Austin Wright’s quote about Yorkshire is taken from his Address to the Degree Convocation at the University of York, 1977, printed in full in James Hamilton’s book ‘The Sculpture of Austin Wright’, 1994

Featured image at top of page taken at the Thirsk Hall exhibition