The Austrian artist Erwin Wurm didn’t mince his words in an article in the Telegraph this summer about his show at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (until 28 April 2024). The exhibition includes crowd-pleasing installations such as an eye-popping 13ft-high bronze gherkin known as Der Gurk (2016). But works from his Fat Car series—bloated automobiles created by coating a real car in plastic and inserting an additional layer of polyester—are not included.
“They [Yorkshire Sculpture Park] do not want to show them,” Wurm said, most likely because of the word “fat”, he believes. The park’s director Clare Lilley said that “there was real disquiet from members of staff about how they could interpret those works in a positive way to our audience. I think that it is right that we’re sensitive to the hurt that people would inevitably feel.” Awkward…
