A look back at some of the highlights of the visual arts offer in the region this year

In the spring, the Piece Hall in Halifax hosted an amazing installation from internationally acclaimed sculptor Sophie Ryder who is known for her large-scale sculptures inspired by animals, humans and mystical creatures. The five artworks – Dancing Hares, The Minotaur and the Hare on a Bench, Torsos, Crawling, and Girl with Knees Up – which went on display in April looked very at home in the courtyard space of the Grade I listed Georgian building. There are few spaces that can contain works of such size – one of the pieces, Dancing Hares, is 4.5m high and more than 7m wide – but the elegant 18th century arcade carried it off magnificently. Visitors came from far and wide to view the works.

One of my favourite venues is the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and this year they held a retrospective of the work of American sculptor Robert Indiana, covering the period 1958-2018. The first major show of his work in the UK (he died at the age of 90 in 2018), it covered six decades of creativity featuring sculpture, paintings and prints, including many works that had not been shown in the UK before. Indiana was probably best known for his iconic LOVE sculptures some brightly coloured, in reds and blues and others in rusted steel. And various iterations were dotted around the Park in the open air which looked very striking against the backdrop of the landscape. Works inside in the Underground Gallery explored the darker side of the American Dream – the rampant materialism and consumerism, and touched on social justice and human rights. An expansive, multi-layered exhibition that merits revisiting, there is still time to catch it as its run has been extended until April.

The Hepworth Wakefield also hosted a major retrospective this year, continuing its championing of women artists in particular, as befits a gallery named after Barbara Hepworth, with its exhibition Hannah Starkey: In Real Life. It showcased the work of Belfast-born photographer Hannah Starkey, tracing her 25-year career from 1997 right up to a new series of images commissioned and created in Wakefield this year and featured her large-scale, carefully choreographed photographs depicting women in moments of private refection, alienation or social interaction.

Smaller galleries that are punching above their weight include the RedHouse Originals gallery in Harrogate which in September managed to entice Jim Moir (aka comedian Vic Reeves) over to the North Yorkshire spa town for an extensive solo exhibition of his work. The show, Yorkshire Rocks & Dinghy Fights, featured oil paintings, watercolours and pen and ink drawings, some with touches of humour and surrealism, and demonstrated Moir’s diverse style and talent. There were large-scale works inspired by visits to Brimham Rocks, portraits of well-known figures and watercolours of birds.

Also in Harrogate, over the summer the Mercer Gallery held a A Celebration of Modern British Abstract Painting. The show was unusual in that most of the works on display came from one private collection, with supporting works from Harrogate Fine Art Collection plus loans from the artists themselves or their estates. It featured 60 paintings from 12 leading British abstract artists including John Hoyland, Patrick Heron, Gillian Ayres, Francis Davison and Albert Irvin. The works ranged from the 1970s up to the early 2000s. Curator Karen Southworth and her team were encouraging visitors to engage in ‘slow looking’ – an armchair was placed in front of a different painting in the exhibition each day; the idea was for people to sit in the chair and spend some quality time with the artwork, really studying it.

Impressions Gallery in Bradford continues to showcase ground-breaking photography in a varied programme throughout the year. Their stand-out exhibition for me this year was Invisible Britain: This Separated Isle, curated by documentary filmmaker Paul Sng and featuring more than 30 photographic portraits of a diverse range of people from across the UK taken by leading contemporary photographers. Each portrait was accompanied by a first-person testimony from the person in the photograph giving a viewer an insight into their thoughts and feelings – and providing a unique glimpse into the complexities of life in Britain today.

Bradford was also one of the few cities in the North to host Van Gogh Live, a multi-sensory experience that immerses visitors in the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh. It opened at the Regency Hall in Bradford in October and has proved so popular that its run has been extended until the end of January, so there is still time to catch it.

It is worth noting that entry to most of the exhibitions mentioned here is free which means this really is art that is accessible to all. In my view taking even just an hour out of a busy day to wander around a gallery is time well spent – and we are so fortunate that there are plenty of opportunities to do just that, right on our doorstep.