Emily pictured in Italy, 2011
Photograph used by kind permission of Annie Hanson
A very warm 1951 Club welcome to Emily Young widely considered to be one of the foremost sculptors working in Britain today.
Emily was born in London during 1951 into a family of artists and writers. Her grandmother, Kathleen Scott, was a pupil of Auguste Rodin, and widow of the polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott, who subsequently married Emily’s paternal grandfather, the politician and writer Edward Hilton Young. Her father, Wayland Hilton Young was also a politician and writer.Her uncle was the ornithologist, conservationist and painter, Sir Peter Scott. Her mother is the writer and commentator Elizabeth Young.
Emily received her secondary education at Putney High School, Holland Park School, Friends School Saffron Walden and the King Alfred School, London. She spent most of her youth in London, Wiltshire and Italy and spent time studying at the Chelsea School of Art and St Martin’s School of Art.
In the late 1960s and ’70s, she travelled widely, visiting Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, France and Italy, Africa and the Middle East. She also lived in the United States, where she studied with the sculptor Robert White. It was during these years of travelling that she developed her broad view of art.
See Emily work …
Emily also has another claim to fame. While at the Holland Park School in 1966 with her friend Anjelica Huston she became a regular at the London Free School night sessions around the Notting Hill area which brought her into contact with many people involved in the UK Underground scene.
Apparently nicknamed “the psychedelic schoolgirl” she was the inspiration for the song See Emily Play, the second single recorded by English band Pink Floyd in 1967 and written by the then frontman Syd Barrett.
See Emily play …
