“Constructing the landscape”
Carlisle, November 2009

I have just shown a Bespoke Mountain in Carlisle, part of the cultural event organised by the artists collective, freerange artists, to support the city’s bid for Capital of Culture. On the corner of Castle St. & Finkle St, opposite the castle, is a thinly bedded out planter. A tractor hood rests on the soil and getting closer, looking through the windows, a landscape of glass, wood, stone and slate and tiny people reveals itself.

“Building - part 1, 2 & 3
Woolworths, Leytonstone, London . August 2009

As part of the Leytonstone Arts Trail, 2009, a large group exhibition of local & London based artists was organised for the abandoned Woolworths building. Artists worked in different ways - mine was one of several site specific pieces that responded in many ways to the unique qualities of the building and its contents.

I developed the theme of building, constructing and making a mark. The piece hi-jacked a shelving unit with 3 tiers - the base shelf looked at living close to the earth and building with elements like clay, rock and brick. The middle layer was wood based, hinting at building with timber, living in forests, using wood to develop more intricate structures. The top layer had echoes of glass, chrome, & plastic urban development - cool & hard, shiny & smooth.

Bespoke Mountain at SCOPE art fair, London

I remade “Bespoke Mountain” for SCOPE art fair - continuing the focus of this piece discussing belonging and place through the materials, I built this “Bespoke Mountain 2” with the stone from the farm walls where I grew up. This added another layer, as I was in a sense building with the stuff of my childhood, making something in the present and for the future, using materials from the past.

A new architectural angle grew out of the installation of this piece, ramshackle extensions: walkways & structures popped up round the back, hidden from the casual, passing gaze. A dialogue began to establish between the elements of architecture and landscape , man-made and natural, which I am continuing. Not as a binary or oppositional relationship, but to explore the co-existence of the two different elements within one form, the interface between them, areas where we build or intervene in the landscape: caves, quarries, mines, cliff dwellings, earth dwellings.

Bespoke Mountain at foldgallery, Kirkby Stephen

Whilst foldgallery was closed throughout the freezing months of January to March 2008, several artists were invited to make work for the window. For this I built “Bespoke Mountain”, continuing ideas about the landscape and belonging that had permeated recent pieces. Using materials foraged from around the town: rubble, concrete, stone, supplemented with stuff from the builders merchants I created a mountain on top of a table, a sculpture growing out of its environment. The idea that I build with the materials from a location is integral, not simply to locate the sculpture to its venue, but also to locate myself. Scouring the streets to find stuff is a way of placing myself in the venue, feeling less of an outsider and more at ease.

200 tiny painted figures lounged around incongruously, looking bright & glamorous in the freezing, grey cold of the empty gallery.