End of trail

The meadow is filled with flowers, my car is filled with wood, my head is filled with thoughts and feelings, the experience is filed away.

Connections and Conclusions

The trail aimed to reconnect territory and timespans, the backyard and the wider world, through observation and experimentation with a conceptual exploration of the environment.
Walking the trail daily has opened my eyes to nature's creative processes and man's impact in the marginal areas that exist and conflict between landscape and urban wildscape.The trail is unresolved but will form a platform for future sculptural interventions in my practice of site-specific works in the environment.

Exploring the site together

With site- specific environmental sculpture trails, a non scripted walk gives the viewer the opportunity to experience the site for themselves and make their own connections.

Often in a gallery exhibition I like to first encounter works on my own without reference to the scripts on the wall or audio descrption. On a second tour I then opt to listen to the ipod guide and hear the artist and curator speak, or read all the scripts. This gives me quite different perspectives.

 If you would like to explore the site with me, please get in touch.

Trees

Trees give us references to the past parkland of the site. The  cedar tree outside reception acts as a totem and shelter. The magnificent horse chestnut trees in the car park and the variety of trees on the boundary all provide a valuable habitat for wildlife. Some have been felled to make way for man and his interventions.
Here I am exploring the relationship between the trees and our lives, and to 'find the form within the material, not to use the material to find the form'.
(Guiseppe Penone 1996)

The Allotment Site

At the back of the wood workshop is a brownfield site, where buildings once stood but have long since been demolished. Rewilding has taken place, giving the sense of a blurred boundary between landscape and wildscape. It has been designated as a future allotment for students to use to either grow crops or adopt as a sculpture garden. However Health and Safety have not yet signed off safe use of the site. Tread carefully, as you do not know what is lurking in the undergrowth. However, in the early spring you will discover snowdrops bursting through, and now a wide variety of botanical specimens can be found. You will also discover some of my interventions.

Material choices

The trail offers me choices in the literal  property of materials, from man made discarded items to natural wood, earth, and  plants. This gives me the opportunity to decide how best to co-opt what is there, and let the materials determine their own shape. The sculpture can gesture to its surrounding space.

Exploring Hidden Corners

Walking the boundaries, encountering hidden corners, secret places, mysteries and untold stories. Finding mounds of earth and rubble, half dug holes, a wild environment emerges.

I experiment and play with what I encounter.

Site-specific art

The site offers opportunities to make site specifc land art, utilising materials that have a connection to the site. Also to be found are fragments  of former students projects, which have 'naturalised' over time. Taking time to trail around the boundaries of the site, many discoveries can be made. Work can be formed and balanced between the patterns of nature and abstract ideas.  Articulate responses and exchanges between the work of art and the locations around the site are formed.

Meadow

I've been building experimental sculptural works on the site, reflecting on past connections. The meadowland that was one part of the Abbey, has been developed over the years in a number of guises. People and buildings have come and gone, but left to its own devices, nature prevails and the meadowland returns. Yesterday bees were buzzing with excitment as they supped nectar from the profusion of dandelions and daisies.

Time

Time is an important medium.

Experience

The experience can be as valid as the object.
The trail can be experienced literally or in a dreamlike state.
It is a place for looking and thinking.
Pondering questions:
Which animals used to graze the meadow?
Who lived here?
How many students have passed through?
What are they doing now?
Has anyone died here?
Where could you hide a body?
Where would you meet a lover?
What is that birdsong?
How many creatures live here?
What happens after dark?

Decoys

The structure is a decoy, it is not important, it functions as a trigger.

Rewilding

As man builds so nature marches on.
The boundaries become blurred, shall we restrain or let go? Man creates landscapes and architecture then abandons them. The temporal cycle of birth, growth, death, continues.
Skeletal remains are overtaken by rebirth. Nature bursts out to show off.

History of the Site

Research shows that the campus site used to be part of the Barton Court Estate,which can trace it's origins back to about 600AD, when it was farm and parkland attached to the Abbey of St Augustine. Barton Court was still a farm until early in the 20th century, but much of its land then went to make way for housing, school and college developments.

In the late 1960's Canterbury Art School, which had originally been founded by Sidney Cooper, had outgrown the twelve separate buildings scattered around town. The modern purpose built campus was developed on a greenfield site, and is arranged like an amphitheatre. The greenspace and large trees remind us of past roots.

Sculpture Trail Development

Starting with a performative build of an artwork on the main front lawn, I aim to build a contemplative walking trail around the campus, highlighting hidden areas. It will emerge in the Spring just as nature iself is waking up. The viewer is encouraged to keep looking as development of forms and changes occur. The trail is an unscripted path that requires physical engagement and fresh eyes. Nature's creative processes and patterns, man's impact on the environment both historically and currently offer reconnections with territory and timespans.

UCA as 'Site'

I am currently exploring the site, space and environment of the UCA campus in Canterbury as 'Site' for site-specific sculptural works. I am instinctively curious about a site and it's boundaries; it's natural history and cultural history colliding on a temporal cycle of birth, growth, death, and rebirth.
Landscape and wildscape, architecture and archaeology ever entwined.
Working with nature's creative processes and man's impact on the environment, I am creating work and experiences using a variety of material and media.

Welcome to the UCA Sculpture Trail Blog 2012