Early Life and Background
Emily Young was born in London in 1951 – and now divides her time between London, Dorset and Italy. She is widely regarded as one of Britain’s foremost contemporary sculptors.
She was born into a family steeped in artistic and intellectual pursuits: her grandmother was Kathleen Scott, a noted sculptor who also happened to be married to the famed Antarctic explorer, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, whilst her uncle, Sir Peter Scott, combined artistic practice with pioneering conservation work. This lineage of art, exploration, and engagement with the natural world forms a significant thread within Young’s own practice.
Education and Travel
Young studied at Chelsea School of Art, Central School of Art, and St Martin’s School of Art in London, followed by a brief period at Stony Brook University, New York. Originally trained as a painter, she turned to sculpture after travelling extensively through Afghanistan, India, Africa, the Middle East, and the United States in the 1970s. These journeys exposed her to a wide range of traditions of sacred art, instilling within her a lasting fascination with humanity’s relationship to the natural world.
Artistic Practice
Since the early 1980s, Emily Young has devoted herself to stone carving. Her heads, torsos and abstract discs are carved from an incredible range of stones, from British limestones full of fossils to Italian marble and alabaster, through to rare stones such as onyx. Rather than disguising the natural qualities of the material, she celebrates them: veins, fractures, and geological histories are revealed as part of the sculpture’s expressive language.
Her work achieves a rare balance – simultaneously ancient and modern, timeless yet contemporary. Her figures and heads embody ancient archetypes, while their pared-down forms address questions of spirituality, ecology, and humanity’s fragile bond with the earth.
Notable Exhibitions
Emily Young has exhibited widely across Europe and the United States. Her work has been shown at institutions including the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, the Imperial War Museum, London, the J. Paul Getty Museum, California, and the Meijer Sculpture Gardens, Michigan.
In 2013, her monumental heads were permanently installed outside St Paul’s Cathedral, London, marking a significant public commission that brought her work to a wider audience. She has also exhibited at Salisbury Cathedral, creating contemplative dialogues between her stone figures and sacred architecture. Most recently, in 2024, she participated in the Venice Biennale, with works presented at Palazzo Mora and the Marinaressa Gardens in association with the European Cultural Centre.
Influence and Legacy
Although not aligned to a single artistic movement, Young’s practice resonates with traditions of Modern British sculpture, recalling the deep engagement with material found in the early carvings of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
Emily Young’s sculpture is not only about stone but about time itself: her monumental forms are carriers of memory, endurance, and warning. In an era preoccupied with environmental fragility, her work reminds us of what endures beyond human history, and what remains at risk of being lost.
Today she stands as one of Britain’s most significant living sculptors, a voice both rooted in tradition and vital to the contemporary moment.
A full monograph on the artist, Emily Young: Stone Carvings and Paintings, written by the art historian Jon Wood, was published by Lund Humphries in 2024.
