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150 PROFILE

art Clare Lilley stands next

to Henry Moore’s
insider bronze Large Interior
Form in the grounds of
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
In her 23 years at the Yorkshire Sculpture
Park, CLARE LILLEY, the director of
programme, has seen thousands of works
come and go on what is now a 500-acre
open estate. She tells David Nicholls about
curating the Frieze Sculpture Park
and the artist who brought her to tears

We’ve grown. When I started at have been a good investment. But
Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1992, that’s not how I buy. I’m a very
it sat on about 15 acres of an instinctive person and go with my
eighteenth-century estate. Now we heart. The most wonderful things
have 500 acres with a number of I have were given to me by people I
buildings on it. Normally we have have worked with because they
about 1,000 sculptures outside at come with a bundle of memories.
any one time, and almost every- I always go to the British Museum
thing can – and does – move. It when I visit London. I love looking
would be easy to come here a half in the cases at old artefacts that
dozen times in a year and see were made during the Upper Paleo-
different things each time. lithic era, some 20,000 years ago.
The park has a large ‘loan collec- I’m fascinated by the compulsion
tion’ with works lent to us from humans have always had to make
artists, galleries and estates. Some of the works get called back, which can not just tools, but also art and objects that express themselves – even when
be a bit of a shock. I was pretty heartbroken five years ago when we said people were living in caves. It makes me feel good about humanity.
goodbye to The Personal Miraculous Fountain by the Spanish artist Jaume Last year we won the Art Fund Prize for the Museum of the Year, and I
Plensa, but that made room for something else. think part of the reason we won is the attitude and loyalty of the people
The work of the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo often moves me to tears. who work here. Their passion is conveyed in everything we do, from the
It bears witness to disappeared and tortured people, whose lives have been exhibitions we stage to the way we deal with visitors and the way we prepare
irretrievably changed or lost due to cruelty. But it transcends this to speak coffee. We do very good coffee!
about hope and warmth. I would love to work with her one day. Public art can bring disparate people together in a way that nothing else
I come from a family of engineers and scientists. My dad worked in can in a public space. They might begin speaking about it, or even joking
telecoms in Liverpool and I think he still wonders what on earth I do for a about it. At its best it allows people to return to themselves, or find some-
living. I grew up in Merseyside near Crosby beach, where Antony Gormley’s thing within themselves that they might have forgotten they had.
Another Place installation of 100 body forms now stand. When I was a teen- I’ve grown to love Regent’s Park, which is the setting for the Frieze
ager I would bunk off school and go to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool Sculpture Park I’m curating for the fourth year. It’s in the English Garden,
where a whole new world was opened up to me. I took my daughters back and before working on it I visited the garden and spent a long time sitting
there recently and they loved it. It might be looking a bit scruffy now, but it’s and observing people: mothers with babies, joggers, office workers and tons
still brilliant and was buzzing with visitors on a Thursday afternoon. of people taking pictures of squirrels.
The first piece of art I bought was a tiny oil painting on wood – around It’s really important for me that Frieze Sculpture Park does justice to
five inches long and an inch thick – by the lovely and talented artist the artists whose works are exhibited, and that it’s interesting for the
Emrys Williams. It’s of old folk huddled on a north Wales beach with scud- collectors who come to see it. But even more than this, I want it to be a
ding sea in the distance, probably Colwyn Bay. It’s so small and thick that it place for people who use the park to really enjoy. It’s a huge undertaking.
works like a sculpture as well as a painting. I don’t have any sculptures in my garden. But there is a trampoline JONTY WILDE
If I’d been strategic over the years I could have bought art that would Yorkshire Sculpture Park: ysp.co.uk

NOVEMBER 2015 HOUSEANDGARDEN.CO.UK