A look ahead at some of the exhibitions coming our way in 2023

The artist Leonardo Drew with his work Number 341 at Art Basel Unlimited Switzerland. Drew's work will feature in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park's 2023 programme. Picture: Jon-Cancro. Courtesy Goodman/Gallery-Galerie Lelong Co/Anthony Meier Fine Arts

Last year was a pretty rich and varied year for the visual arts offer around Yorkshire – with a range of world-class exhibitions for art lovers to enjoy. And the good news was that galleries and museum appeared to be continuing to gradually recover in the aftermath of Covid in terms of visitor numbers. In 2023 we can look forward to more of the same – here are just a few of the highlights.

Sheffield Museums and Galleries will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sheffield artist George Fullard (1923-1973) with a new exhibition at the Graves Gallery. The show, entitled ‘Living in a Sculpture’, will bring together a wide range of his drawings and sculptures to explore his work and the influences and experiences that shaped it. The youngest son of a miner, Fullard grew up in Darnall in the shadow of Nunnery Colliery and described his childhood as ‘like living in a sculpture’. After studying at Sheffield College of Arts and Crafts, Fullard went on to the Royal College of Art, where he later became a lecturer. Living in a Sculpture, which runs January 14-July 1, will feature more than 50 of his artworks, drawn from Sheffield’s own collection, alongside a series of key loans.

In Leeds, The Tetley will be celebrating its tenth anniversary with a programme that continues the gallery’s commitment to supporting early career artists with their first major exhibitions. The year opens with Andrew Black’s ‘On Clogger Lane’, an experimental documentary which will be screened at the gallery January 20-May 14. The film, which explores how the infrastructures of capital have transformed the topography and social relations of a rural valley in the North of England, will be presented alongside archive materials relating to local history, activism and protest in and around the Washburn Valley.

In February a new exhibition opens at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth exploring the influence of the natural world on the Brontës’ lives and work. ‘The Brontës and the Wild’ will run at the museum throughout 2023. Highlights include poetry manuscripts by Emily and Charlotte, plus works by their father Patrick and first editions of poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell and ‘Wuthering Heights’. In April a new installation by award-winning Bradford-based photographer Carolyn Mendelsohn entitled ‘Hardy and Free’ – a line from ‘Wuthering Heights’ – will tell the diverse stories of a selection of women living in the Bradford district through photography and audio.

Award-winning Bradford-based photographer Carolyn Mendelsohn will be working with the Brontë Parsonage Museum on the project Hardy and Free. Picture: Scarlet Page

In Wakefield, the Art House continues to present a wide-ranging programme of exciting contemporary art. Opening in February is an exhibition showcasing the work of Nigeria-based Samuel Nnorom – his first solo show in the UK, it runs until March 12. Nnorom creates sculptural installations using a process called bubbling, to explore concepts of social ‘bubbles’. From March 29-May 14, the gallery will host a group show with the intriguing title ‘Her performance is taking place at the beginning and end of the world’ featuring the work of seven female artists recently graduated from Goldsmiths University and exploring their shared interest in and passion for language.

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s 2023 programme focusses on material, process and play, exploring experimentation and the physicality of making sculpture. One of the highlights is a commission for a large-scale sculpture by African-American artist Leonardo Drew for the Park’s 18th century Chapel. Made on site, it will present a powerful statement about the weight of collective experience, memory and the cycles of life and death. Standing at 5m, it goes on display March 18-October 29.

The Hepworth Wakefield’s programme for 2023/23 includes a large solo exhibition by Hurvin Anderson which will focus on his Barbershop series of paintings, inspired by a barbershop in his home city of Birmingham, as a lens through which to understand Anderson’s wider practice and key themes of memory, identity and nationhood. The gallery also hosts a major survey of the work of British-Singaporean artist Kim Lim bringing together more than 60 key works in a variety of media from across her four-decade career.

This has only really scratched the surface of what promises to be another great twelve months of world-class exhibitions in Yorkshire; of course there will be more detail in these pages in the coming few weeks and months. Here’s wishing you a very happy 2023, filled with many art gallery visits.