Written In Stone: In The Studio With Sculptor Emily Young

Emily Young’s monumental meditative works – exhibited from St Paul’s in London to La Defense in Paris  – hold whole life stories in the fault lines of the stone, finds Olivia Cole.

Artist’s Studio: Emily Young

With the Mediterranean in view and ancient quarries close at hand, there could not be a more perfect studio than an ancient Tuscan monastery for the British sculptor, Emily Young. Her monumental carved heads are an arresting part of the British landscape, from St Paul’s Churchyard to Salisbury Cathedral and Berkeley Square. Whether precious onyx, lapis lazuli or marble, Young sources and uses raw stone materials that are often hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions, of years old. Her sculptures are so striking, they often seem as though they have been excavated, rather than the work of a contemporary artist at her peak.

Fifteen years ago Young moved her unique practice to Italy. It was, she says, a dream fulfilled. England’s biting cold isn’t a hospitable landscape for an artist who likes to work long hours outside, free carving into the night. She recalls working in the snow in West London. Now, her office is in the monk’s old refectory, her two working spaces sequestered away from the more sociable parts of the building where she can move around, finding shade or shelter from far warmer winds.

In practical terms, it’s far more conducive to working outside, but there’s a spiritual kinship with Italy, too: a country ‘deep’ in her bones. When she was two, her dad (a writer, and later politician) was posted to Rome as the correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, taking his family along with him. The sun-soaked stones made for a magical formative playground. Even after they came home, the family returned to Italy every summer. There aren’t many sculptors at home in the land of Michelangelo and Bernini – but Young’s sensual stonework, with its great emotional heft, belongs here too, installed in their company at the V&A’s sculpture galleries. She has also recently been celebrated at the biennales of both Venice and Florence.

(© Annie Hanson)

Young’s life as an artist began as a painter. But as the mother of a tiny baby, she moved house for more space with her family and found abandoned offcuts of kitchen marble worktops left behind in the garden. ‘It’s ridiculous, but somebody had actually left a hammer and a chisel too. I carried it around with me for ten years, thinking that they were going to come back and pick it up,’ she remembers. ‘I started doing these very shallow reliefs and I really loved the stone’s resistance of the material.’

Decades on, with a second studio in Dorset and a new showroom in West London, her heads, torsos and monumental discs are cherished for their meditative, peaceful qualities, holding whole life stories in the imperfections and fault lines of the stone. ‘It may show signs of great dramas in the past: huge geological phenomena, earthquakes and volcanos and god know’s what. All of that, you can read in the stone.’ But on the other hand, ‘there’s a stillness’.

Her work has even found a place under the sea. In her spare time, she adds to Casa dei Pesci (Home of the Fish), a non-profit established in 2012 to restore the marine habitat off the coast of Maremma. The project began as the brainchild of a local fisherman who wanted to stop overfishing. He stopped trawlers – quite literally – by dumping concrete slabs just off the coast. Young has doubled down on his efforts, adding (so far) three carved works in Carrara marble and enlists other artist friends to come and make work (now totalling 44 sculptures) to sit beneath the waves.

‘Dolphins are coming in again because the fish are there for them to catch…’ she says. Reeds have returned to the seabed, ‘where fish lay their eggs and where tiny creatures can be safe. And so immediately it’s like the nursery, keeping the Mediterranean alive.’ 

The resulting underwater sculpture park has – not surprisingly – become a pilgrimage for divers, joining those lucky fish swimming freely around this vision. Whether it’s under the sea, or above the surface, Emily Young’s extraordinary creations stop us in our tracks. 

See Emily Young’s sculptures at Richard Green’s Twelve Days of Christmas exhibition until 12 December. richardgreen.com