Emily Young is 'Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor' - Financial Times, September, 2013
She was born in London to a family which includes writers, artists, politicians, naturalists and explorers. Her grandmother was the sculptor Kathleen Scott, a colleague of Auguste Rodin, and her uncle Peter Scott, started the WWF in 1961.
As a young woman she worked primarily as a painter, studying briefly at Chelsea School of Art and Central Saint Martins in London, and Stony Brook University in New York. She left London in the late 1960s, spending the next years travelling widely, studying art and culture. In the early 1980s she started carving in stone, preferring to use discarded materials from abandoned quarries. The primary objective of her sculpture turned to bringing humankind and the living planet into a consciously closer conjunction.
To experience the natural beauty, geological history and subtle energy of material stone, including its unique capacity to embody human creativity over long periods of time, is a part of the changing story of human consciousness, and the understanding of our place in time and space. We can imagine our history both backwards to the creation of our universe and forwards into the vast unknown.
Her approach allows the viewer to comprehend a commonality across deep time, geography and cultures. Her preoccupation is our troubled relationship with the planet. Through the combination of traditional carving skills allied with technology where necessary, she produces timeless works which marry the contemporary with the ancient, manifesting a unique, poetic presence. They are, each one, a call to thoughtfulness, looking to the future.
Young has exhibited at many prestigious museums including: The Getty, California; The Imperial War Museum, London; The Whitworth, Manchester; Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Michagan, and in 2018, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Her work forms part of public and private collections throughout the world and in 2024 she exhibited at Venice Biennale, showing work at two venues in the city; Palazzo Mora in Cannaregio and Marinaressa Gardens in Castello, in collaboration with The European Cultural Centre’s exhibition, Personal Structures.
Emily Young currently divides her time between studios in the UK and Italy.