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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90 x 15.5 x 19 Plaster, daylight, paint
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.
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137 x 47 x 60 Hessian, wire, pitch, linen, paint, plaster, daylight, wood, steel.
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.
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270 x 150 x 70 Plaster, paper, paper plates, daylight, paint, steel rod, retort clamps with boss heads, concrete.
The trumpet-like flowers on late summer bindweed inspired my flower forms. Their location is in keeping with the tradition of placing flower arrangements in window alcoves to celebrate the beauty of God’s creation and its provision through the seasons. The paper plates were surplus ones from a fundraising Open Garden.
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20 x 100 x 60 Plaster, scrim , cotton thread, scagliola (plaster ,pigment, rabbit-skin glue)
The wall memorial plaques proliferating the walls and floor in this church’s east end surprised me by mostly commemorating women. What were they like? And maybe one of them had a passion for music and knew about the physicality of sound that resonates in the body when playing an instrument. I used casts of cello edges with their vein-like purfling to express the possibility that she may have been a cellist.
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120 x 93 x 60 Cherry wood, plywood, daylight, paint, retort, clamp and boss-head.
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.
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51 x 33.5 x 16 Paper, wood, daylight, perspex, nails, paint.
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 therefore transient and all colour disappears as the day closes, leaving the seen paper surfaces white.
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170 x 150 x 35 Cardboard, paper, paint, bow hair(horse), photographs, daylight, steel.
This is a 'composition' , as in music, 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 inspiration for form, line and colour.
I chose to limit the forms to a choice of 3 'motifs' : yellow and blue oblongs of (re-reflected ) colour represented light/shadow; bow hair represented sound waves and music; and close-up photographs of bats (taken in negative) were my bat motif. I improvised an arrangement of my motifs in a supportive 3D grid of steel rod during the 2 days before the Festival’s opening concert.