Naturally Sculpture

About

Naturally Sculpture is an adventurous exploration of natural materials and forms. Massive sculptures abound, including a life-size tank and a humongous Trojan Horse. These are complemented by wondrous kinetic wind sculptures that depict the flight of birds and movement of fish. Various floral tributes bloom, including a swathe of waist-high snowdrops and a triffid-like allium. Fauna emerges in the guise of a groovy mole, giant spider’s web, oversize crab claw and a surprisingly elephantine sculpture.

The show explores a range of biological characteristics and aesthetics through natural materials; some like wood and willow are expected, but the incorporation of coal dust intrigues. Natural forms also result from man-made materials including electrical cables, iron, stainless steel, highly reflective plastics and even fake grass! Other intrigues include Jenny Pickford’s triffid-like Stargazer Allium. The sculpture’s title also alludes to the experience it induces, which given its scale, means one must look up to the flower head. Doing so, fully enlivens the glass flowers as their translucency and coloration is revealed and intensified by sunlight.

The elephant in the room, or shall we say garden, belongs to artist Jim Unsworth. Another Surprise for Fabricius Luscinus is by no means shy, it bursts out like a ‘Jack in the Box’. Half tame, half wild. His muscular sculpture is both striking, dynamic and jocular. The humour in Lucy Strachan’s Grassfall is more deadpan and on first viewing prompts a doubletake and wry smile. Cascading over the top of the wall comes not a torrent of water, but fake grass. Its tufted artificiality channelled into rivulets and drips of liquid green.

Some sculptors have taken materials from the natural world and transformed them into man-made objects of an immense scale. A life-size American tank has been sliced, spliced and slotted back together through a process of digital manipulation and computer controlled cutting of plywood. The Deconstruction and Reconstruction Of An Army Tank by Peter Mountain is enriched by attentive detailing all over, be it the mudflaps, tracks or turret. The blackened charring of the tracks heightens the sense of a sculpture on manoeuvres.

The war footing continues at a gargantuan scale with Robert Fung, his sculpture clad in a veneer of oak slab offcuts. Of course, the notion of cladding to finalise appearance is central to the conceptual undertow of his convincing Trojan Horse. Potentially a gift to the city of Troy, Fung’s From Far Away Great Changes Come As Forms You Thought You Knew is replete with a trapdoor, mane of sticks and tail of brushwood. It has even been assaulted by a flurry of arrows! Yet, despite the very analogue construction from wood, the artist had a more digital notion of infiltration in mind – that of the Trojan horse virus used to fleece the unwary online. Perhaps a reminder it might pay to look a gift horse in the mouth after all.

The bounties of the natural world can provide a rich source of inspiration for artists, crafting these wonders in man-made materials. Richard Cresswell’s steel Murmuration exploits the wind to mimic the motion of flocks of birds in flight. Each bird has been reduced to an abstract triangular wing, which then pivots and spins on a tree branch when the wind rises. Invariably, the winged forms all shift in a chain reaction of sequential unison, much as a flock moves together in nature. When the wind falls, the action recedes and the sculpture then resembles a tree laden with birds about to roost.

Way below the aerial, another sculpture has literally tunnelled up into view. Fatkin the Mole, by Marjan Wouda, pierces the earth and proudly surveys his work, with his powerful broad legs and feet splayed in a ta-da pose. The sculpture relates to an abandoned mine, where, Fatkin was the nickname of the last working miner. The mole’s normally velvety surface has been impregnated with the tools of the colliery trade. Look closely and you can see bits of rope, cogs and chains. Its final intrigue; coal dust impregnated into the mole’s skin. Fatkin the Mole is a somewhat cheeky sculpture, but dig deeper and layers of meaning can be excavated.

Overall, Naturally Sculpture reveals how sculptors can modulate the form of materials to depict nature and natural phenomena; as well as transforming natural materials into man-made forms. This dialogue between three-dimensional form and the natural world may remind us of the beauties and fragilities of nature; as well as our dependence upon it. So, why not come and take a walk on the wild side and find your own pathway between nature and sculpture.  

Full list of participant artists:

Richard Cresswell

Deborah Duffin

Robert Fung

Kevin Hope

Nick Horrigan

Linda Johns

Sue Kirk

Andrew Lee   

Sam Lee

Peter Mountain

Jenny Pickford

Nita Rao

Pete Rogers    

Peter Sainty

Lucy Strachan

Jim Unsworth

Marjan Wouda