TERRA
Dawn Yoxall
11 February – 29 April 2012
Jerwood Visual Arts presents TERRA, the forthcoming Jerwood Encounters exhibition exploring the relationship contemporary sculpture practice shares with the environment and landscape beyond the gallery itself. The exhibition is curated by Hayley Skipper and Antony Mottershead of Forestry Commission England based at Grizedale Forest, and features work by Jonathan Anderson, Edwina fitzPatrick, Luke Jerram, Anne-Mie Melis and Owl Project. The artists each explore contemporary sculpture practice through their own sensory relationship with the environment and the artwork exposes these ideas through a multiplicity of unique works.
Physical form, materials and conceptual intent are often the primary languages used to interpret contemporary sculpture, however as a discipline sculpture also has an intimate relationship with our wider sensory experience. The strategies and processes employed by each of the artists translate information from one form of sensory experience into another. The range of practices included within the curatorial selection are an expansive definition of sculptural practice covering performative and installation based work that engages all of the senses including sound and smell.
Jonathan Anderson works with coal dust and other elemental substances. His work expresses the cyclical nature of things and provides an ideal vehicle for the exploration of poetic metaphor and transformation. It talks about shutting off, making still, stepping out of sequential time and ultimately death. Anderson has exhibited his work widely across Wales and in April 2010 he was the recipient of the Richard and Rosemary Wakelin Purchase Prize at The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea.
Edwina fitzPatrick explores living environments that involve mutability and change and reflects upon how climate change may affect this delicate balance. Her work also celebrates narratives and conversations, which are often deeply informed by the history of place. Fitzpatrick often collaborates with experts across a range of disciplines including horticulturalists, biodiversity experts, architects, perfumers, foresters, and composers. Fitzpatrick is currently completing a Ph.D. with Glasgow School of Art in collaboration with Grizedale Forest and developing practice based research in relation to the development of the environmental art archive at Grizedale.
Luke Jerram creates sculptures, installations, live art projects and gifts fusing his artistic sculptural practice with his scientific and perceptual studies. Jerram’s ongoing research of perception is fueled by the fact that he is colour-blind. He studies the qualities of space and perception in extreme locations, from the freezing forests of Lapland to the sand dunes of the Sahara desert allowing new ways of seeing. A multidisciplinary artist, Jerram develops extraordinary public projects and is currently working on a number of complex and ambitious new works. His celebrated street pianos installation Play Me I'm Yours is currently being shown in many different cities around the world.
Anne-Mie Melis’ work explores the visual nature of plants and their role in an increasingly technological world. Combining sculpture, animation and drawing in innovative installations to ignite our senses and expose her questioning of the environment, the engineering of nature and our changing climate. The collaborative nature of Melis’s practice brings together art and science, the twin engines of cultural evolution. She recently completed a Leverhulme Trust supported Residency at the School of Bioscience, Cardiff University.
Owl Project consists of Simon Blackmore, Antony Hall and Steve Symons. Working collaboratively they create musicmaking instruments and machines that combine electronics and software with traditional techniques such as green woodworking and wooden water wheels. In 2009 they won Urbis' Best of Manchester Award and their proposal for a floating waterwheel driven musical instrument was selected for Arts Council England's Artists Taking the Lead North East commission, one of 12 commissions for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
