New Temporary and Permanent artwork for the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail.
In autumn 2002 two artists, from very different backgrounds, started working in the forest creating temporary installations and events on the trail. Small scale, short lived and unexpected interventions are occurring as the artists explore the forest, inviting both visitors and local people to think about the forest in new ways.
How did Erika Tan, an artist born in Singapore and living in London, respond to the forest? What ideas and experiences did she arrive with and share with Jane Spray, an artist living in the Forest of Dean? How did Jane’s long history and relationship with the Forest influence.
“Someone quite new to the Forest, and someone who has lived here for over 18 years, brought up a family here. Both artists, one internationally acclaimed. The visitor and the resident.
The visitor comes, and responds to the newness, the differences. A strong, fresh response. Yet the visitor who comes to explore will be no blank screen. Past experiences, comparisons, expectations, motivations, all will colour their time in the Forest, affect their perceptions, their work.
For the resident, the first “newness” is overlain with a knowingness - what it is like to live in, be part of, the place over time. Layers of meaning are deposited, a geology of mind. Change through time is gradual but cumulative, up to a point. If I stay here long enough, I will be absorbed, back into the forest itself.
However, at present I feel well placed and well able to share the Forest with another !
The residencies considered and explored the impact of our personal histories or our perceptions and experiences of the forest”.
Jane Spray
Erika Tan’s work is particularly concerned with audience interaction and then resulting impact on the work when viewing it, she says…
“My practice has developed from an interest in anthropology and the moving image and explores the ways in which different media can be used to create situations that excite, provoke, question, confront and invite comment from an audience. Forms of interactivity or the incorporation of the responses from the audience or contributors have been a strong continuum in my work. The audience as agent for change; the questioning of hierarchies of site over experience in the “reading” and interpretation of the work; the transformation of site into mechanism for examining layers of socialisation, form some of the underlying motivations in the work.”
Jane Spray, a visual artist and poet living and working in the Forest of Dean has been working alongside Erika, their shared experience of newness and familiarity will create ideas and small temporary events that people visiting the forest may get involved in or just visit on their walks through the forest.
“My work is involved with process, nature and growth, and in interactions with place. It is difficult to pin down and evolving all the time, quite varied. This may come across in the slides and pictures. I also work as a sculptural potter but so far in the built environment clay has only come into its own in the form of carved clay paving and carved brick.
Video projections are a developing interest, something I am experimenting with presently, as a development of my interest in landscape photography. I assisted Tony Sinden the artist film-maker with his large backlit video projection in the forest for the LIGHTSHIFT event in the Forest of Dean last Autumn, and am now developing my own projects.
Plant growth and pattern is another thing I am working on when I get the chance.”
The first key date within the project was 21st September 2002 Peace One Day - The UN International Day of Peace, a day of global ceasefire and non-violence - people came to the forest to celebrate this day of peace.
“If you build a house you start with one brick, if we want to build peace we must start with one day”.
October 2002-May 2003
During these months both artists were active in the forest on temporary works. The landscaping for In-Situ, a permanent work by Erika Tan was completed in May 2003, prior to the replanting and completion of the work in the Autumn 2003.
This project was developed and managed by the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trust and Forest Enterprise with funding from the Forest of Dean District Council, Regional Arts Lottery Funding, and the Arnolfini Collection Trust. With kind support from Speech House Hotel and the Forest Community Radio.