My brief was to provide a sculpture trail - a sculpture or installation in each of the seven ancient churches in the Corvedale, Shropshire - as part of a music festival. Leaflets showing footpaths between the churches were made available and there was also a suggested driving route.
Five of the seven exhibits were new works, made specially for their locations.
My leading material, in all but one piece, was daylight. So pieces were made for windows sills or the spaces in front of them, and the church lights remained off except for the start and end of concerts.
For inspiration I focused on what ‘church’ meant to me : growing up in a rural parish with my mother being the church organist; choir practice and the physicality of the music; services spent examining the ancient floors and walls; and under pews - the kneelers, the heating pipes; the flower arrangements in the window spaces ; fundraising events; curious objects in the vestry; the mystery of ‘all things visible and invisible’.
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St Margaret’s, Abdon
The pure, clear and high sound of the treble voice inspired this piece. The three half columns are held upright by the circular holes that form the trefoil design of the base. They are rotated in their base holes to engineer the light re-reflection.
90 x 15.5 x 19 Plaster, daylight, paint
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Holy Trinity, Holdgate
In contrast to the Abdon Treble, this piece aims to represent the physicality of a rich deep bass note or chord, having both vibration and texture. This 12c church had a particularly organic presence with weaving lines and patterns carved into its stone font, as well as having black slime on some of the stone walls.
137 x 47 x 60 Hessian, wire, pitch, linen, paint, plaster, daylight, wood, steel.
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St Peter’s, Diddlebury
The trumpet-like flowers on late summer bindweed inspired my flower forms. Their location in the window space is in keeping with the tradition of ‘doing the church flowers’ to celebrate the beauty of God’s creation and its provision through the seasons. I made the flowers using left-over paper plates from fundraising teas.
270 x 150 x 70 Plaster, paper, daylight, paint, steel rod, retort clamps with boss heads, concrete.
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All Saints, Culmington
The wall memorial plaques proliferating the walls and floor in this church’s east end surprised me by mostly commemorating women. I decided to bring the female form back into the church, and used casts of cello edges with their vein-like purfling to express the possibility that she may have been musical.
20 x 100 x 60 Plaster, scrim , cotton thread, scagliola (plaster ,pigment, rabbit-skin glue)
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St Catherine’s. Tugford
This form is inspired by the sensory antennae of nocturnal creatures such as scorpions and moths. I use laboratory stands in some works (see also Convolvulus Laminam) to emphasise the practical science behind my use of daylight.
120 x 93 x 60 Cherry wood, plywood, daylight, paint, retort, clamp and boss-head.
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Broadstone Chapel
Here I play on the term ‘illuminated’ that is used to describe the colourful painted marginal art and decoration of medieval manuscripts. But the pages in this work are literally illuminated - by daylight. And the colour you can see is bound in the daylight. The colour is transient.
51 x 33.5 x 16 Paper, wood, daylight, perspex, nails, paint.
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St Michael’s, Munslow
This is a piece about the physical space of a church and what occupies it : light and shadow, music, and bats. The yellow cross carried by Christ in the neighbouring stained glass window was my starting point for form, line and colour. I thought about musical composition and structures and motifs. I chose to use 3 motifs: yellow and blue re-reflected colour to represent light/shadow; bow hair to represent music and sound waves, and close-up photographs of bats (taken in negative) to represent bats. I improvised an arrangement of my motifs in a supportive 3D grid of steel rod over 2 days before the Festival’s opening concert.
170 x 150 x 35 Cardboard, paper, paint, bow hair(horse), photographs, daylight, steel.