How a stag night turns into Stagnight in Michael Lyons's world of sculpture on wheels

Michael Lyons will hold Meet The Artist Saturdays tomorrow (July 11) and on July 18 from 1pm to 3pm at the New School House Gallery, Peasholme Green, York. All welcome.

AMID the furore over stag nights and hen nights on the worse-for-wear weekend streets of York, you will find a very different stag night in the summer haven of the gardens beside the New School House Gallery, off Peasholme Green.

It is a work on wheels by the esteemed Cawood sculptor Michael Lyons with dancing figures that only adds to the joys of one of the city’s most delightful quiet corners for contemplation, even more so on the day of this gallery visit, when up the road, a (S)park and ride electric bus was aflame.

Stagnight is the beacon to draw visitors into New School House to view Half-Light, Michael’s second exhibition there after he marked his 70th birthday with the 2013 show Mithras Suite and the launch of Judith LeGrove’s book, The Sculpture Of Michael Lyons.

Originally from the Midlands, Michael has lived in Yorkshire since the 1970s and was a founding member of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near Barnsley, in 1977; vice-president of the Royal British Society of Sculptors from 1994 to 1997; and head of sculpture at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Half-Light, an exhibition title suggested by Judith LeGrove, comes from Lyons’s past too, bringing together drawings and sculpture based and the landscape, much of it dating from the 1980s, “in order to re-examine their current and future potential”.

Michael Lyons's Half-Light exhibition at the New School House Gallery, York

“To make an analogy,” says Lyons in his exhibition guide, “As spring sees the emergence of life from the deadness of winter, so this work re-emerges and renews itself, blossoming into fruitfulness. Drawing from the past, it looks towards the future and to newly created work.”

Explaining the meaning of Half-Light, Michael says: “We spent a long time thinking of exhibition names, speaking to the gallery directors Robert [Teed] and Paula [Jackson], but when Judith thought of Half-Light, inspired by a song cycle by Lennox Berkeley called Songs Of The Half-Light, it seemed to fit the bill very well.

“Half-Light was suggested by two things: many of the drawings are of the forest and a lot of them are black and white, so it’s half dark, half light and that’s the mood of the drawings too.”

Many of the drawings and in turn the sculptures have northern roots – in more ways in one as plenty are of trees. “The tree drawings started because, prior to that, I did a lot of collages but when I came here to live in Cawood, I began to notice how the trees stood out as structures against the horizon, boldly silhouetted against the sky because it’s so flat around Cawood,” says Michael. “So some of the works were based on landscapes around York, like in Stillingfleet, and some at the back of my house in Cawood, drawn with charcoal on paper.

“I was also given a residency in 1984 in Grizedale, in the Lake District, where I drew in pencil and made linocuts and monotypes, which was a different sort of experience to drawing landscapes around York.”

In 1986, Michael made a series of works inspired by Titian’s Bacchanal Of The Andrians, and a year earlier you can also see the Bacchanalian influence on his 1985 Stagnight sculpture, made in steel, rusted and varnished and now on sale at £59,000. “Stagnight was a play on words, suggesting a stag in the wood and also a group of revellers; the drunken mayhem of a stag night.

“I thought of how people become at one with nature through alcohol, where you become part of things,” says Michael, who also recalls “the unexpected delight of looking up from a drawing in which I’d been concentrating to see a huge stag watching me through the trees”.

Stagnight has been sited for many years beneath trees near Michael’s studio until its temporary relocation to the gardens by the gallery, where everyone can enjoy how its references to masks and animals give the work a sense of mystery and humour. “After much deliberation wheels were introduced to the sculpture, which brought to mind a wagon or cart,” he says. “Above this, the other forms appear to cavort or frolic.” What a fine sight for summer.

Light and shade in Half-Light

Another of the exhibition’s most striking pieces, the 1991 steel sculpture Moondance At Beltane, “fits in with the Bacchanal drawings too,” notes Michael. “It has that sense of relief and joyousness,” he says of a work that has equally been at home outdoors. “It was outside in my garden for a time and outside a country house in Warwickshire too; it seems more compacted indoors.”

Moondance In Beltane looks in peak “health”. “I’ve scraped off the heavy rust, sandpapered it down, varnished it, then polished to bring the shine down,” says Michael.

It now stands tall in the white cube design of New School House, the defining sculpture in the full glare of Half-Light.

Michael Lyons, Half-Light, New School House Gallery, Peasholme Green, York, until August 15.