Art to get hooked on

Sculptor Emma Stothard has created a series of works in Whitby which celebrate the town’s rich fishing heritage

- Janet Deacon

Sculptures celebrating the rich fishing history of one of the Yorkshire Coast’s favourite resorts will greet visitors to the town this autumn.

The artworks on the new Whitby Sculpture Trail are being created by Whitby-based artist Emma Stothard, whose work can be found worldwide, including in the Royal Gardens at Highgrove, the private residence of Their Royal Highnesses The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall, and at chef Raymond Blanc’s two-Michelin starred Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire.

She is also a regular contributor to the annual RHS Chelsea Flower Show – her work has featured in several of the award-winning Welcome to Yorkshire gardens in recent years.

Emma, who was born in Hull and grew up in windswept Kilnsea at the northern end of Spurn Point in East Yorkshire, is currently hard at work creating the series of seven sculptures as part of a project created in partnership with and funded by Scarborough Borough Council.

All the pieces will be sited on the town’s West Side – for the directionally challenged among us, that’s the side with the whalebone arch, not the one with the Abbey – and will guide visitors along the harbourside, up Flowergate and Skinner Street and back down to the bandstand.

Each piece is made from hot-dipped galvanised wire painstakingly woven by hand (the pain sometimes being quite literal as Emma twists the heavyweight wire) and can take up to four weeks to create.