Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) presents a new landmark exhibition by the celebrated South African artist, William Kentridge (b.1955). The Pull of Gravity marks the first museum presentation outside South Africa to focus on his sculpture and has been a decade in the making. Bringing together over 40 works made between 2007 and 2024, this significant project is a carefully choreographed and multi-sensory journey into Kentridge’s world.
William Kentridge: Monumental Bronzes at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Kentridge is known for working across media, including drawing, sculpture, tapestry, animated films, theatre, and opera productions. He has lived in Johannesburg throughout his life and his practice is indelibly connected to the socio-political history of South Africa. From a standpoint that rejects certainty, he questions grand narratives from history, politics, science, literature and music, alongside an ongoing interrogation of the legacy of colonialism.
The Pull of Gravity presents an extensive body of sculpture across a range of scales and materials, including bronze, steel, aluminium, paper, cardboard, plaster, wood, and found objects. In addition, the exhibition features the first institutional presentation of Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot (2020-24). This series of short films was embarked upon during the first Covid-19 lockdown and allows audiences an intimate insight into the life of Kentridge’s studio, the workings of his mind, and the energy and agency of making. In the central gallery space, two films – More Sweetly Play the Dance (2015) and Oh To Believe In Another World (2022) – are shown in rotation in an immersive installation across seven screens. They span over 20 metres and wrap around the viewers, surrounding them with music and movement.
William Kentridge: Monumental Paper Processions
Featured Artworks
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Although tackling pressing and difficult subjects, Kentridge does so with openness and curiosity around the human condition. The artist makes works that are acerbic and challenging, yet they embrace the enduring possibility of hope and abound with poeticism and beauty. These ideas are often explored using metaphors of darkness and light, lightness and weight – all considerations that are vital to his sculpture.
Over the last two decades, sculpture has increasingly become a key part of Kentridge’s practice, taking drawing into three dimensions and developing from puppetry, film and stage props. The inextricable relationship between drawing and sculpture in his work is at the heart of The Pull of Gravity. His sculptures delve into how the essence of form is constructed, perceived and understood, testing the boundaries of the medium and its potential to embody ideas and question ways of seeing.
William Kentridge: Equestrian Sculptures at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Artist Bio
William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg, South Africa) is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre and opera productions.
In 2024, in Venice, Kentridge premiered a new nine-episode video series, 'Self-Portriait as a Coffee Pot,' - a site-specific installation curated by long-time collaborator and curator Carolyn Christov Bakargiev at the Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation. Following this, in October, MUBI presented: William Kentridge’s, ‘Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot’ Premiere in New York.
In conjunction with the world premiere of his newly commissioned opera, 'The Great Yes, The Great No,' which debuted at LUMA Arles in July 2024, the solo exhibition, 'Je n’attends plus' (I’m Not Waiting Any Longer) presents a collection of major works, some of which had not been seen in Europe before.
Kentridge’s largest UK survey to date was held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2022. An iteration of Kentridge's Royal Academy survey opened at the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts in May 2024. In the same year Kentridge opened another major survey exhibition, 'In Praise of Shadows,' at The Broad, Los Angeles. In 2023, this exhibition traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Kentridge’s work has been seen in museums across the globe since the 1990s, including the Luma Foundation, France (2024); Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation, Venice (2024); Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2024); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1999, 2005, 2010); Albertina Museum, Vienna (2010); Musée du Louvre, Paris (2010); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid (2015); Kunstmuseum Basel (2019); Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2019). The artist has also participated in biennale’s including Documenta in Kassel (2012, 2002, 1997) and the Venice Biennale (2015, 2013, 2005, 1999, 1993).
Collections include: MoMA, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi and Zeitz MoCAA, Cape Town.
Kentridge lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.
