Turning on the Waterworks

The exhibition opens on Saturday and I was helping out with the hanging today so thought I would just give a quick profile of the Waterworks Nature Reserve especially in relation to art, artists and this exhibition in particular.

The Waterworks Nature Reserve opened ten years ago. Part of the huge Lee Valley National Park, the Waterworks has a team around it consisting of conservationists and experts in wildlife habitats,  woodlands and local history which includes the fascinating Middlesex Filter Beds. It also has a small but perfectly formed golf course and a lovely, quiet and comfy cafe!

Since 2010 the educational area of the centre has been opened up for artists providing a unique, local exhibition space in an area which has an almost complete lack of them. The person to thank for this is Angie Oliva who is manager at the Waterworks. I asked her about art, the Waterworks and Changing Spaces and this is what she said:

I thought we had a really nice building and that we could definitely use it much more for the local community as well as help to introduce a new audience to the Lee Valley Park. For me it's all about nature, the environment and expressing yourself ...... and I really like art! 

We are all delighted to be hosting Changing Spaces. Jonathan's work is very beautiful and I love the sculpture! I love that it's natural - that it's a whole tree - but I also love the fact that it's actually free. It's not entangled in anything and there's nothing else to distract you from it. You can just see it exactly for what is.

Valerie Grove

Intervention

While working on-site creating this sculpture (which I have titled Intervention), I had at least two hundred passers-by stop and ask me what I was doing.

99% of the comments and feedback they gave me were very positive and people liked the concept behind the work. I did get one person who wasn't impressed with what I was up to but after a few minutes of lively discussion, even this person walked away having reconsidered.

Before I had started work on this piece I knew it had to be very different from the blandly typical sculptures that are usually made from trees. The fact that my tree had started to rot forced me even further along the trajectory of something new and different and I am delighted with how things evolved

However, I never expected that what I ended up with would capture the imagination of so many people. Many of those I spoke to in the course of making this work asked if I would be making more sculptures of this kind. This is not only a very hopeful sign of future possibilities for my work but is also quite gratifying in the sense that such genuine public interest makes me feel that I have really done my job as an artist.

From Poplar to Sculpture

Progress Report by Valerie Grove 

Over the course of the past few months I have been closely monitoring the progress of 'Changing Spaces'. As well as regularly talking to Jonathan, I have made two studio visits and three sculpture site visits, all of which I have visually documented.

My three sculpture site visits have been very different. On the first visit I found a poplar tree trunk laying on the damp grass shedding its crumbly bark and soft wood along with a whole host of insect inhabitants.

By the time of the second visit it was obvious that the original plan for the sculpture (carving and inserting painted bricks) would have to be abandoned because of the unstable condition of the wood. When I arrived  at the site I found Jonathan already well under way with Plan B, which involved removing the most rotten parts of the trunk, wrapping the whole thing in wire mesh and stabilising it with steel straps.

Today was my third site visit and although the sculpture is not yet finished, it is now upright and in its final position. Getting it there was a complicated operation and involved  the assistance of several people and a mechanical digger to lift and move the sculpture, then lower it into position so that it could be placed upright in the hole dug manually by Jonathan last week.

The whole operation took about an hour and it would not have been possible without the actual physical and mechanical support of the team at the Waterworks Centre and the Lee Valley Park. At this stage it is very clear not only how much work has gone into creating the sculpture, but also just how collaborative the process has been.

I will do a final site visit to see the completed work shortly before the exhibition opens on June 16th.

Up close and textural

Here are a few images showing some of the textural detail in the materials. Some are from finished works and others were taken when the work was in progress.

Always Have a Plan B

One of the defining pieces of the project was going to be a 3 metre high, site-specific sculpture made from a felled tree but I had a major problem today.

I went to the site to begin working on the sculpture only to discover that the tree is now completely rotted. Although I noticed some water damage when I moved it into position a few weeks ago, the majority of the central trunk was intact and stable. Since then a combination of constant rain, muddy ground and insects have made it completely unworkable as sculptural material.

This was a real blow, and let me tell you, depression started to set in rapidly! However, over the last two years I have repeatedly heard the mantra that artists should be taking more risks so I am putting this experience down as an exercise in risk. From the outset the tree was an unknown quantity and I knew that I had to work on whatever I was presented with. However, the other mantra that should never be too far from the mind is 'Always Have a Plan B'.

The fact that this sculpture remains a major component of this project means I have had to think quite quickly and very creatively about how to overcome my little problem. What I have decided is to change the original, sculptural concept  of working on the wood itself and to encase the decaying trunk in wire mesh instead. The mesh will be pinned tightly to the surface of the trunk so that it takes on the form of the original tree while supporting the material integrity of the wood.

This protective intervention actually presents a work that engages directly with ideas of conservation and preservation. The rotting tree will serve as a habitat for different life forms connecting it very strongly to the  Lee Valley Park's work with the conservation of natural habitats. At the same time, the gradual disintegration of the rotting tree inside the mesh will ultimately leave only the tree shaped cage behind it, thus rather contradicting the idea of preservation. The whole process of this 'slow-release sculpture', however, will provide a visual embodiment of an entire natural cycle.

The whole process

Please give us a brief synopsis of the process of creating this piece of work?  
OK... this particular piece consists of three different components. Two of these - the bricks and the wood - were salvaged from the Olympic Park more than twelve months ago which is a good indication of just how long I had been thinking about and planning this project. At that time I was constantly on the lookout for things that I could potentially use although at that time I was still not sure that the project would ever see the light of day. So to be writing about this now as a completed work is a really good feeling.

The first stage was to get my bricks in a row...

It was very important to get the symmetry and scale of this work right from the outset so that the precision work that followed always had the right alignment.

The next stage was to insert the salvaged wood into the brick and put in some serious work to transform the rough wood to the extent that it becomes almost unrecognisable. I then attached the whole construct to a a base which had been sized to harmonise with the shape and scale of the brick and the wood:

 Once I had the scale I started to work on the surrounding textures and colours:

One other thing that I would like to say about this particular piece is that the brick is really quite special. It is 'London Brick' which has a long history. The London Brick Company was founded in 1889 and has essentially built London since then and it continues to do so. The bricks I use in this work were left over from the Olympic Park and much of the brick based construction in the Olympic Park and the Lea Valley Park as well, were manufactured by the London Brick Company. 

What about the wood? 
The wood has come from wooden pallets that could be seen everywhere during the construction as they are the bases upon which everything is delivered. So the pallets would have had bricks  or other building materials sacked on them. So I think this particular work really is a linear distillation of the materials and processes of construction.

 

Video tour of the Studio

Here is a short tour of my studio which gives a general idea of the work I have produced for this project so far. Not all of the pieces are finished but they are all well on the way leaving me free to focus on the on the sculptural piece I will be doing on-site in the Lee Valley Park. 

This video also shows just how much it is actually possible to do and to fit in a very small space!