In his winning entry for this year’s Turner Prize, Martin Boyce brings an autumnal park indoors and re-interprets it in classical modernist/constructivist terms. A large room, re-designed in every detail. White columns from which flows a designed ceiling of white shapes – “trees” with “leaves” and branches. The centrepiece is a table covered in graffiti [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Sculpture category.
The Artist and the Land – Richard Long
Richard Long is one of the earliest and best known artists to engage in what has become known as ‘land art’. In an innovative way to engage with the land and the landscape, Long’s work is centred around lengthy walks in the countryside. His walks represent an exploration of the land and his relationship with [...]
There are chimeras – no more either/or. The work of Ellen Rogers
The work of Ellen Rogers brings focus to the question of whether the human is part of, or separate from, “Nature”. The giraffe sculpture above has the body of a giraffe, human front legs a mechanical replacement for its hind legs and is made of steel. It is an artistic chimera – an image of [...]
Our Relationships To Nature – Gaudi’s Architecture
Nature has inspired humans in many ways over many centuries. But maybe none match the completeness of Antoni Gaudi’s relationship with nature – Nature as structural, functional, spiritual and decorative inspiration. Gaudi was a spiritual man with a great regard for nature as God’s creation. The newly consecrated Sagrada Familia “strives to compress all of [...]
From Vietnam to The Environment: The work of Maya Lin
Maya Lin shot to fame when, at age 21 and while still an undergraduate, she won an open competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. An architect, artist and sculptor, Maya Lin has, over the last few years, turned her attention to environmental issues. WHAT IS MISSING? What Is Missing? is the [...]
Practical, Beautiful and Surreal – The Work of Jason de Caires Taylor
How and why would one create an underwater scutpture park? Sculptor and scuba diver Jason de Caires Taylor has, so far, created a total of 65 underwater sculptural installations in Mexico and across the Caribbean. While seeming somewhat surreal, these sculptures have a very practical purpose. They are intended to ‘spread the load’ currently borne [...]
Amazonia – Lucy + Jorge Orta at the Natural History Museum, London
One of the most exciting things about this exhibition is that the Natural History Museum (MNH) has established a contemporary arts programme – of which this exhibition is a part. It is both encouraging and exciting that the NHM, traditionally focused on science, didactic education and on its collections, is leading the way – supplementing [...]
Trash – Again: The Art Of Huang Xu
It’s hard to imagine that the diaphanous forms created and photographed above are discarded plastic bags. Huang Xu, a Beijing born artist, collects plastic bags from the endless rubbish heaps now to be found in China and, using 3D scanners normally used by archeologists, digitally re-models them to create these wonderful images. Plastic bags are [...]
Strength in Delicacy – the works of Christiane Loehr
I recently came across the works of Christiane Loehr at an exhibit supposedly focused on renewable energy held at MACRO – a museum of contemporary art in Rome. Loehr is a German artist that constructs complex and beautiful structures using natural materials – often seeds or flowers. These structures are generally small – the one [...]
Sculptures of Living Processes – Jackie Brookner
Jackie Brookner makes “Biosculptures”. She describes these as ‘living sculptures…plant based systems that clean polluted water, integrating ecological revitalization with the conceptual, metaphorical and aesthetic capacities of sculpture.” One such project is called “The Gift of Water”. The town of Grossenhain, near Dresden in Germany, built a new public swimming complex in which the water [...]
