ART WITHOUT WALLS
EXTRAORDINARY AND CHALLENGING, JOYFUL OUTDOOR ART HELPS US SEE THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY, SAYS NATASHA GOODFELLOW
My first encounter with outdoor art wasn’t a huge statue or installation. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Flowering next to the path at ankle level was a ‘spoon flower’– several spoons arranged in a circle, their shafts planted in the earth, their bowls opening towards the sky. A few steps further on, droplets of glass hung in a tree, splitting the sun into a scatter of tiny rainbows. Rounding a corner, I saw tendrils of coloured glass emerging from the waters of a pond like exotic water lilies.
The venue was the Chelsea Physic Garden, London’s oldest botanic garden. The names of the artists, and indeed the rest of the works, are lost to me now, but these three simple pieces were nothing short of a revelation. Seen in the carefully controlled conditions of a gallery, within four walls, these works wouldn’t have moved me at all, but there – in the fresh air, amongst the plants and looking for all the world as if they’d grown there, or fallen from the sky, each thing enhanced the other, »
creating something greater than its parts.
Since then, I’ve become more and more fascinated by outdoor art, finding it enhances a garden or landscape like nothing else, especially since the best pieces are made specifically for their location, causing viewers to consider both afresh. Some actually are their location: the soil, stones or vegetation reformed or rearranged into something quite different. Even when pieces are not site-specific and are bought or loaned like any other work of art, their placement is absolutely crucial to how we experience it. Whereas seeing a sculpture in a gallery in London or Rome or Paris might feel much the same, seeing it in a field full of wildflowers or a dark wood, or next to a river with the reflected light playing across it – all these things are utterly transformative. And then there’s the weather. No experience of outdoor art will ever be the same twice. At the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, one of my favourite places, I’ve seen Henry Moore’s monumental works surrounded by munching sheep in summer, silhouetted against the russet tones of autumn and, in winter, draped in a blanket of snow.
Once you start looking, you’ll find a surprising amount of outdoor art – in the city and the countryside alike, and even in places where you might not expect to find anything at all (think of Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North overlooking the A1 in Tyneside, or Jaume Plensa’s Dream, perched above the M62 in Merseyside).
So, pack a picnic and strike out to see what you can discover this summer – then just remember to keep going back again and again. Each time will be different.
“Once you start looking, you’ll find a surprising amount of outdoor art – even in places you might not expect to find anything at all”
UNEXPECTED TREASURES
From waymarking sculptures on coastal paths to pieces made from the earth itself, outdoor art comes in many and various forms.
GALLERIES IN THE GLADES
Forests can often feel a little like galleries: the hushed atmosphere, the filtered light, the sculptural forms of the branches. It’s no surprise then that several forests have taken this one step further, installing site-specific sculptures, to help us explore and understand the woods and their history. So in the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail, lines of compressed charcoal by Onya McCausland signal underground coal mines, while in Kielder Water and Forest Park in Northumberland, Chris Drury’s Wave Chamber projects the rippling waters of the adjacent lake onto the chamber’s floor.
SCULPTURES BY THE SEA
Summer is often when we head to the coast and, just as many of our seaside towns are now home to impressive art galleries (think Margate and Dundee), so outdoor art has stepped into the limelight. Another Place by Antony Gormley is undoubtedly one of the most haunting works: 100 life-size cast-iron statues “trying to remain standing, trying to breathe,” as Gormley has said, in the shifting sands of Crosby Beach, just north of Liverpool.
Due to its size, and therefore the
statement it makes, a lot of outdoor art tends to be by well known artists with guaranteed ‘pulling power’ (eg, Maggi Hambling’s Scallop at Aldeburgh). It’s refreshing then to note that the five new waymarking sculptures created for the Gower coastal trail between Mumbles and Rhossili this year are all by lesser-known artists, all women, handcarving in oak.
PARKLIFE PIECES
Purpose-built sculpture parks got going in Britain in the late 1970s with the launch of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the first in the UK and, with more than 500 acres to play with, the largest of its kind in Europe. The rolling open fields provide an expansive backdrop to monumental pieces by Henry Moore, while the landscaped grounds and woods shelter works by a roll call of leading names from Elisabeth Frink to Andy Goldsworthy. Entrance is free, but donations are invited. If it’s site-specific art you’re after, head further north to Jupiter Artland, just outside Edinburgh, where collectors Robert and Nicky Wilson have invited contemporary artists to make new pieces for their 100-acre estate. Highlights include several works by Goldsworthy and Cells of Life by Charles Jencks, in which the earth itself has been sculpted into sinuous, swirling landforms.
STUDIES IN STATELY PILES
Many stately homes house sculpture in their gardens, often pieces of classical statuary – or casts thereof – placed there at the time of the garden’s building to signal the owner’s erudition. But several now also boast quite wonderful site-specific sculptures, as well as high-profile annual exhibitions. Norfolk’s Houghton Hall – home to Richard Long’s slate Full Moon Circle and a copper-beech hedge based on the signature of the current owner’s grandmother – is hosting a large Damien
Hirst show until 15 July, while in Lincolnshire, Burghley House’s 2018 show, Otherworldly, explores all things cosmic and interplanetary, and includes a 17m-long sculpture of Kylo Ren’s Tie Silencer from Star Wars. Also well worth a visit is The Alnwick Garden in Northumberland, where eight of William Pye’s innovative and delightful water sculptures are permanently on show.
NO PLACE LIKE HOME
There’s perhaps no better way of seeing sculpture than within the environment in which it was created. The four most famous outdoor artists’ homes in Britain reflect the very different outlooks and approaches of their owners. The 70 acres around Henry Moore’s former home in Much Hadham in Hertfordshire showcase many of his iconic bronzes, while a cluster of studios display his lesser-known drawings, etchings and stone works. Much more intimate is Barbara Hepworth’s former home in St Ives, where she both created works and displayed them to visiting buyers and gallery owners. Both artists merely placed works outside, however. For the garden as a complete artistic creation, both incorporating sculpture and becoming one with it, one must look to two other artists: Derek Jarman and his shingle garden at Dungeness and Ian Hamilton Finlay’s lyrical creation, Little Sparta, in the Pentland Hills outside Edinburgh.
“I’ve seen Henry Moore’s works surrounded by munching sheep in summer... and, in winter, in a blanket of snow”