Artist Statement
Stone House - Bonnington
For many years I have wanted to make a work that acts as a geological window into the landscape. I have been waiting for a place where the bedrock lies close to the surface, but does not puncture it. Exposed rocky outcrops would reduce the sense of revelation that is part of the work. The soft and rolling landscape at Bonnington has provided the perfect context. It does not appear to be rocky and yet just below the surface lies stone.
Layers are evidence of time and change. The peeling back of one layer to expose another makes me aware of what lies below my feet. It is a lesson in perception and of how the eye can conceal as much as it reveals. It is difficult to believe that something so strong and powerful can be so hidden whilst being so close.
At Bonnington, I have excavated an area of bedrock about six metres by eight metres, upon which I have built a stone house. Containing the bedrock inside a house accentuates the sense of revelation of the stone floor.
Houses are usually places of security, shelter and comfort for people. There is something unnerving about entering a building in which nature is the occupant. These houses become a forum in which the nature of the place and human nature meet. I want people to look into the land - not out of the building. The view is internal not external.
Stone Coppice
At Bonnington another, entirely new, idea was provoked by a small piece of coppiced woodland.
The underlying bedrock at Bonnington affected the way I saw the place. Walking through the woods there I kept thinking about the stone below and the connection between tree and earth. My response was an idea, and eventual proposal to place stones in the grip of the tree trunks - held aloft above ground.
The excavation for Stone House also revealed the impact trees have on stone. This is something I have been aware of, but had never before seen so powerfully displayed. A large cavity in the bedrock just inside the entrance to the house, at the foot of the steps, is evidence of where a tree once grew - it is as if the tree had eaten the stone. The tree had died a long time ago but its roots remained intact. The excavation was done slowly by hand and it was extraordinary to follow the roots into the stone and to see just how relentless the will of a tree is to take root. This sense of trees attacking, tearing and lifting up of bedrock lies at the heart of the coppiced work.
A coppiced wood is one in which the trees are cropped. The trunks are cut above ground and the tree left to throw up new growth. The tree becomes multi-stemmed, which gives the wood a strong feeling of linear verticality. This vertical movement increases the sense that the stones are being pulled out of the ground and pushed upwards. Each stone has been placed in a tree with limbs able to receive it. Some went in more easily than others. The first were the most difficult and the trees became more heavily scarred than I would have liked in the process. Most of the stones were unusable material left over from the building of Stone House.
Cutting is part the nature of a coppiced wood. It is worked woodland, and a practice that I have continued to work in, by placing the stones. The occasional trunk was removed where necessary to allow a stone to fit. I will have to manage the continuation of the coppice and work it to the advantage of the stones. I might give more light to those trees with stones by thinning out those around. In those areas where there were few trees able to hold a stone, I could cut a tree with the aim that it will produce fresh shoots that one day will be trunks able to take a stone. I would imagine that, after the initial crop of rocks placed in trees, a further round could take place in say 10 or 15 years. Inevitably some of the trees now holding stones will die and will need replacing. It is a living, growing changing sculpture in which people and wood play equally important roles.
The relationship between stone and tree will become stronger both physically and visually through time as the trunks grow around the stones. Ultimately the work will be an expression of the strength and power of trees and their impact on stone.
Clay Tree Wall
A third work at Bonnington connects with Stone Coppice and Stone House. Each of these three related works explores a different layer in the landscape, and the way a tree penetrates those layers. Stone House and Stone Coppice explore the space above and below ground. Clay Tree Wall explores the surface between the two.
A tree cut down as part of the thinning process in the coppiced wood has been fixed to a wall and covered with clay. The clay was applied wet and cracked as it dried out - the shape and form of the tree dictating the pattern of the fissures. The clay wall was constructed in the same way that the bedrock was deconstructed. It is stark evidence of the process of change that, whilst present in both the other works, is not so clearly articulated.
Whilst to some extent each work is based in the natural process of growth and decay they also acknowledge people are very much bound up in that process. It is not a contradiction that a work about the surface of the land is on the wall of the gallery.
The process of erosion and movement of soil is one in which people are very much involved. The three works recognise the connection we all have with nature. A building contains the imprint of nature as much as the landscape contains the imprint of people.
Biography
Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist. He was born in 1956. He was brought up on the Harrogate side of Leeds in the green belt. Here he took on work as a farm labourer as a schoolboy and said that the repetitive nature of the work informed his future art. He studied fine art at Bradford College of Art from 1974 to 1975 and then at Preston Polytechnic from 1975 to 1978. He now lives in Dumfriesshire and travels the world undertaking commissions and creating works.
Andy Goldsworthy produces site-specific sculpture and land art set in natural and rural settings. His art involves natural and found objects to create temporary and permanent sculptures that reflect the character of their environment. He is well known for his ephemeral pieces which are made from natural materials such as snow, ice, wood, flowers, leaves, sand, mud and twigs.
Jupiter Artland
Clay Tree Wall
Stone Coppice
Stone House - Bonnington
