Winter/Hörbelt - Basket #7

On of my top five at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

German artists Wolfgang Winter and Berthold Hörbelt have worked together since 1992 creating sculptures that fuse together an interest in minimalist art with ideas around meditation, the importance of play, modernist sculpture, and contemporary architecture and design.
Basket #7.Oxley Bank is a two storey street pavilion that the artists placed on this high ridge overlooking the Longside valley in 2004. It provides shelter, rest and spectacular views across the landscape. Longside was designed as a hunting ground in the late 18th century and many of the landforms and planting you can see today were established then. The Bretton Estate was designed to incorporate a series of viewing points and follies, only a few of which remain. Basket #7.Oxley Bank plays on this historic precedent and at the same time opens up a beautiful walking route to Longside Gallery. Constructed from double-layered steel mesh, from a distance the work appears to be alternately solid and semi-transparent.
From inside looking out it both offers and slightly obscures the view and becomes a place for contemplation, set apart from the world around.
Winter/Hörbelt are particularly interested in making sculptures that encourage visitors to physically interact with them. Often they are based on familiar objects, such as benches, tables or playground equipment; objects that although 'everyday' are extremely symbolic as structures around which we gather and form public and private, social and emotional bonds.
Light is another important element in the artists' work and their sculptures are often internally lit. Daylight is also used to great effect in works such as the series of pavilions called Kastenhaus, built from plastic bottle crates, one of which stands in the nearby town of Castleford. In both the Basket and Kastenhaus series the light is filtered so that the walls of the structure become somehow transparent whilst also containing the space - and experience - within.