EMILY YOUNG FRSS
Born London 1951
Ref: CL 3820
Porphyry Head of a Girl
Porphyry: 13 ½ x 8 x 9 ½ in / 34 x 20 x 24 cm
Age: 590-600 million years
Source: Egypt
Geology notes:
Porphyry was formed during the solidification of magma. The large, angular pale crystals formed first, under the earth’s surface, as tiny rectangular forms. Subsequently as the magma erupted and solidified into this dark green stone, the crystals were immobilised in position. We see the crystals on the surface of the stone as sections of their shapes.
‘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 Sir Peter Scott, helped start 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 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.
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS OF NOTE:
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
David Roberts 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
Artemis, London
Loyola University, Rome
Cloister of Madonna dell’Orto, Venice
Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago
St Pancras New Church, London
Bowers Quarry, Portland, Dorset, courtesy of MEMO
Team Valley Business Park, Gateshead
Godinton House, Kent
The Hanna Peschar Sculpture Garden
Chatsworth House, Derbyshire
Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire
St James’s Church, Piccadilly, London
Casa dei Pesci, Talamone, Italy
Berkeley Square, London
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023 Pareidolia in Stone. Richard Green Gallery, New Bond Street, London
2023 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 Contemplative Head. Victoria and Albert Museum, London
2018 New College, Oxford
2018 Christies, London
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
2015 Call & Response. The Fine Art Society, London
2015 Stone From the Mountain. The Fine Art Society, Edinburgh and Hong Kong
2014 Cassandra / Earth II. Berkeley Square, London
2014 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 and The Fine Art Society, London
2012 Lithica, Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh
2012 The Metaphysics of Stone. Berkeley Square
2011 Emily Young at Neo Bankside. South Bank, London
2011 The Maremma Heads. The Fine Art Society, London
2010 Microcosms. Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh
2008 Angels and Archangels. Salisbury Cathedral, Salisbury
2008 Singing Stone. Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh
2007 The Fine Art Society, London
2007 The Crypt, St Pancras Church, London
2005 Torsos, Heads and Discs. The Fine Art Society, London
2004 The Crypt, St Pancras Church, London
2004/05 Glyndebourne, East Sussex
2003 Kew Gardens, Richmond, London
2002 Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh
2001 Leighton House Museum, London
1999 Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh
1999 Sculptures in Stone. The Fine Art Society, London
1999 Recent Stone Carvings. The Fine Art Society, London
1998 Sculptures in Stone. Thackeray Gallery, London
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 Personal Structures Beyond Boundaries. ECC Venice, coinciding with the 60th Venice Biennale
2024 Sediment Spirit: Towards the Activation of Art in the Anthropocene. The Sainsbury Centre, Norwich
2024 Presence - The Figure in British Postwar and Contemporary Sculpture. Messums West
2024 Sculptors’ Drawings. Messums West
2023 The Robin and Rupert Hambro Collection. Christie’s, London
2020 Time and Eternal Life. Cromwell Place, London. Sir Dennis Mahon Foundation
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 Roberts Art Foundation, London
2013 Carving in Britain since 1910. The Fine Art Society, London
2012 Messerschmidt and Modernity. The J. Paul Getty Foundation, California
2012 The British Cut. The Space, Hong Kong
2012 The Figure in the Landscape. The Garden Gallery, Wiltshire
2007 Art at the Rockface. Norwich Castle and Sheffield Millennium Galleries
