Using sculpture in the garden
The right piece of sculpture in the right garden setting is both a stable visual anchor and an attention-grabbing talking point, writes MICHAEL McCOY
In the past few decades, the limitations around sculpture in the garden have been smashed to smithereens. Not that long ago, sculpture was synonymous with statuary, which made a lot of Aussies uncomfortable. The term sniffed of (and literally contains) notions of stature and status. It immediately suggested nude nymphs of literally stone-cold marble in formal, remote and unachievable gardens.
Thankfully, those days are long gone, and the potential of sculpture to broaden the scope of artistic expression in the garden is virtually unlimited. But beyond the ‘artiness’ there are some important contributions or functions that garden sculpture provides.
Romancing the stone
One such function of garden sculpture is to address that rarely spoken-of craving we have for something stable and solid in what is otherwise a vegetable creation. Gardens are constantly changing, shifting, growing. It’s what we love about them.
But all that change needs the stable reassurance of a visual anchor.
The presence of stone is a powerful way to provide this – in the form of stone walls, stone paving or, perhaps most powerful of all, stone sculpture. And the plant-against-stone combination highlights that superpower of gardens: to have one foot in eternity and one in the moment.
Second to stone is steel, and the relatively recent celebration of rust has settled it perfectly into the garden setting. On the one hand, steel has the necessary visual weight and immutability of a sculptural material. On the other, the fact that it rusts makes it feel nature aware, as if it’s not entirely free of the hints of decomposition that nature invariably provides. Modern alloy steels that rust to a point and then stop have allowed this magical perception of the balance of stability and decay, without the danger of an expensive piece of art simply rusting away over time.
Centre of attraction
Perhaps the most important thing that garden sculpture provides is a focal point. Every garden view (like every room and every painting) benefits from a strong centre of interest. Plants can provide this. Some temporarily demand your attention when in full bloom, no matter what else is going on. Trees of good trunk colour or form can provide perfect visual features. But in their absence (and who ever has enough good, well-placed trees?), a piece of sculpture is the focal point par excellence.
The attention-grabbing power of sculpture makes placement critical. When you see sculpture through this lens, it’s immediately clear that you don’t want multiple, conflicting centres of interest. Avoiding this pitfall can be a real challenge for avid collectors of sculpture, or curators of sculpture parks, who want to place several sculptural pieces in a limited space. Ideally, each piece of sculpture should stand alone in your field of vision (unless, of course, dissonance, confusion and ambivalence are part of your artistic goal).
It’s also worth considering what the sculpture will be seen against. All sculpture stands out best in front of an even-textured background. This could be a wall, a sloping lawn, a fine-textured hedge or, perhaps
most dramatic of all, the sky (if you have a conveniently placed hill!). Sculpture that is set against mixed and texturally diverse plantings is likely to be reduced in its impact, or even semi-invisible. That may be part of your plan – you just need such a decision to be considered and deliberate.
Manmade vs natural
The visual impact of any sculpture will also depend upon another fundamental choice: whether the piece is, stylistically, born of humankind or born of nature. In the case of the former, it’s precisely the ‘manmade-ness’ of a piece of sculpture that makes it stand out in the garden. Our brains are hardwired to search for signs of human presence, and any inorganic material or mechanically straight line will immediately grab our attention. It’s freaky how good we are at this kind of detection, and in this scenario we use that capability to our artistic advantage.
The ultimate in the manmade category is the aforementioned statuary – and most powerful of all, classical statuary in white marble. In the right setting, there’s nothing like it, but most of us just don’t have the right setting or, frankly, the necessary budget. This kind of statuary, along with formal urns, can also be purchased in (sliding down the affordability scale) composite stone products, concrete and fibreglass. Big pots, even empty ones, can provide fabulous focal points in a garden. Indeed, the better the pots (such as those gorgeous, appropriately priced Anduze vases), the less likely you’ll need anything in them. A large terracotta pot, on the other hand, might benefit from good planting.
Even a garden bench provides a piece of apparently utilitarian sculpture. It has the added benefit of suggesting that you or the visitor may find time to sit in the garden. The power of suggestion is a potent force!
Then there’s the other, softer, mostly cheaper category of sculpture: pieces born of nature. Large boulders can be fabulously powerful sculptural elements, as can snaky, sinuous tree trunks. And sometimes its the surprising manmade modification to an entirely natural element that grabs the attention, such as a painted tree trunk, an element of carving on an otherwise natural boulder, or that bizarre creation of the Victorian era, the stumpery, in which tree stumps are arranged like rocks in a rockery. In these examples, perhaps there’s nothing better to point to a core truth about garden sculpture: it’s whatever turns you on.