EMILY YOUNG
The Metaphysics of Stone

Berkeley Square Gardens | 7 February - 25 April
 
The Fine Art Society is delighted to announce that six stone heads by Emily Young,  widely regarded as one of the finest living carvers working today, will stand keeping watch over Mayfair's Berkeley Square this spring.

In the largest and most complex of her career, Young has created a series of sculptures from ancient, complex, volcanic stone. She sourced these boulders from a disused quarry on Monte Amiata, near to her studio in a semi-ruined 17th century monastery in the Maremma, Italy. The heads, weighing up to 3 tonnes, are grouped in a circle, clearly visible to all those passing through or around Berkeley Square.

Young has been described as a mediator between the human and geological realms. Her work carries a message about permanence and impermanence: the rocks that she carves are billions of years old, putting the transience of human life into perspective. The sculptures bring together a scientific understanding of time and durability with an individual, artistic interpretation. This dialogue between the two disciplines of free stone-carving and science takes Young's work into the realm of metaphysics.