“Roast Lamb at Wast Water” 2006

This piece is installed on the back of one of The Mountain Goat Buses which tour The Lakes, until February 2007, as part of Fred 2006 - a large art invasion across Cumbria during October.

The image depicts the classic Lakeland view over Wast Water looking towards Wasdale Head and Great Gable, chosen for its iconic status. The choice to use non traditional art materials – food used as sculptural material - reccurs throughout my work, treading a well worn path of expanding what’s acceptable / accessible in art and partly to test my sculpture skills.

It is a continuation of the ideas behind Roast Beef (see below). My ideas here are not so much with the use of local lamb per se, but to use it as a way of highlighting our relationship to the landscape: how we view it, experience it, consume it, interact with it and feel about it. I am struck by the immensity of this landscape: incredibly beautiful, massive in size, iconic in status. By re-making it in model form, I started the impossible task of somehow getting to grips with the landscape, of taking hold of it, carving it out for myself and possibly getting closer to it. My roots with farming & wholesale butchering led to this place, this work and this image.

I will be talking about the piece at The Wastdale Head Inn, Cumbria, on Friday October 13th, at around 1.30,(open & free). The bus will also be there and can be booked via www.mountain-goat.com.

For last years involvement in Fred go to www.sallybarker.org/empire, and scroll down to Fred 2005.

For postcards from 2005 & 2006 please contact sally@sallybarker.org.

“Roast Beef at Wast Water” 2006

This piece was the forerunner to Roast Lamb at Wast Water and is very much a simpler version. It was made as a response to the theme of ‘Britishness?’ , for a show by Another Production, at the Cornerhouse, Manchester, 2006.

The intention was to have a marriage of two British icons: roast beef dinner and the British landscape.

The question about how we access the landscape grew in importance as this piece developed, until it became the focal point of Roast Lamb at Wast Water. When I made Roast Beef, I hadn’t even seen the actual view , it was carved using the image on a postcard. This happens a lot with the Empire models, when real buildings are hi-jacked, it is often a 3 dimensional response to 2D images. Retrospectively, I see Roast Beef was a study for the next version - Roast Lamb.