Helen Chadwick and Caroline Walker at the Hepworth

TEXT BY BETH MCKENZIE

Helen Chadwick, Ego Geometria Sum, 1982-3, installation, Helen Chadwick: Life Pleasures at The Hepworth, Wakefield. Photograph taken by author

Want to strike fear into the hearts of every gallerist, curator, and arts journalist in the UK’s capital? All you have to ask is “what are you doing for London Gallery Weekend?” Now in its fifth iteration, London Gallery Weekend has become one of the most important dates on the city’s arts and culture calendar with hundreds of openings to choose from, hoards of creatives to schmooze and a wide variety of free alcohol to smuggle. But with all the excitement (and anxiety) surrounding the event, it bears the question: what about the rest of the country?

Although it holds some merit, there is a general belief that arts and culture in the UK are pretty much exclusive to London and the surrounding counties. As with a majority of things - housing, infrastructure, public transport, employment, education — the North is continuously overlooked by arts funding, which is already limited as it is. Across the North West, Yorkshire and the North East, the Arts Council boasts plans to invest over £382 million between 2023-26, yet a third of their overall budget is still reserved for the capital.

Despite historic neglect, the north of the UK is still host to some huge names. This month alone you can see: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Leeds Art Gallery; (admittedly one) Mary Cassatt at the Laing in Newcastle; a whole host of names at this year’s Biennial at Tate Liverpool (yes — there’s a Tate in Liverpool); and, William Kentridge at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. But perhaps most exciting — to me at least — is the double bill of Helen Chadwick and Caroline Walker at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield. Aside from being host to one of the world’s leading galleries and the birthplace of its namesake Barbara Hepworth — and of course the living legend that is Jane McDonald - Wakefield hasn’t got a huge amount going for it.

When I asked my friend (and fellow Yorkshirewoman) what is the best thing about this West Yorkshire city, all she could muster was “the pie shop is quite nice”. Quite. And since the pie shop closed earlier this year, what better time than during a weekend when every London gallery is frantically sending out preview invites, to leave the city behind and experience some real culture, in good ole’ Wakey.

I resisted the urge to stroke these - damn those gallery barriers.

I didn’t know whether to be sickened or seduced. But it's that very closeness between attraction and repulsion that Chadwick knew so well, especially as it pertains to the body. She was thoroughly engaged by Foucauldian debates surrounding the idea of gender as being culturally constructed rather than innate, and questioned the necessity of reading sex upon the body in order to determine whether we should gain pleasure or reject what is put in front of us. Essentially, Chadwick recognised that we’re all big sacks of flesh that grow hair, squish and stretch, and secrete liquids, and that it can be oddly beautiful as much as we must not reduce ourselves to that. What a tragedy it is that, in a day in age where the policing of people’s bodies is so rampant, and gender essentialism is creeping back into the cultural rhetoric, Chadwick is no longer with us to challenge our understanding.

Daphne (2021) is a painting I could look at forever.

One of my favourite aspects of Walker’s painting is her incredible skill for depicting light. Even on a grand scale, she is able to create an intimacy, a tenderness, that could exist even without the figures she chooses depicts. In some compositions, namely Friday Cleaning, Little Bugs (2024) and Ultrasound (2021), there is an almost Carravagesque use of light and dark, with huge swathes of the canvas covered in black with subjects' faces illuminated by a single light source.

The latter of these paintings was completed during Walker’s residency at the maternity unit of UCL hospital, where she herself gave birth. Contrasting the clinical (literally) and cold perception of the medical environment, Walker’s mastery of light denotes a care and safety, a midwife seen tapping away at the computer whilst a sonogram takes place behind; even the faint indicator of the Covid mask can’t take away the warmth that seems to permeate the space.

Walker, Ultrasound (2021).

Between midwives, nursery workers, camp counselors, swimming instructors, grandmas and sisters-in-law, Walker shows that the act of mothering extends far beyond the mother. Even in 2025, the economy of care is still upheld by the labour of women, unpaid, unappreciated, and invisible. The phrase “it takes a village” is certainly true; what Walker highlights is that, “the village” is decidedly female.

After a quick natter and a teacake at the gallery cafe — which is surprisingly flashy might I add — it was time to say farewell to the Hepworth and so too, to Wakey. On reflection, I realised I had felt jaded by the London art scene. I mean how many Hackney shared space shows can one person wander around, even with a free beer in hand. Perhaps it was necessary to return to the gallery I used to associate with my Art GCSE trip and get away from the performance of it all. But most importantly, to see some bloody good art. So, the next time you find yourself thinking about London as the centre of the universe, spare a thought for those of us beyond the home counties. Because, if the Hepworth has anything to do about it, there’s life in the old gal yet.