Ai Weiwei's Tree 2010 (tree sections and metal bolts) is now on display in the newly extended Tate Modern. Earlier on this summer I saw the sections being unpacked from large wooden boxes and set out on the floor like a giant jigsaw. I couldn't quite make out what the material was from the balcony looking down to level 1. The tree sections looked like wood with metal bolts - yet I knew that I couldn't assume that it was so - as the intention of the artist is not illusionistic. I was in no doubt of the material used in Iron Tree 2013 that I drew outside the chapel at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The whole thing- tree and bolts alike- were flaming red with rust. Pools of rust-rain water caught within its segmented structure served as pigment to inform these quick drawings. The reason why I was so familiar with the unassembled parts of Tree 2010 was that it acted as a mould for the piece I drew in Yorkshire.
EYPE ROUGE (October 2013) unfinished state 1 (above) was a drawing in local earths with the paper breathing through the marks. I returned to the beach with it this January, February, June and July). The 'airy' drawing of the first state is now under solid layers of Fuller's Earth along with the gritty, sandy and clay outcrops available for collecting at beach level. This year my attention was drawn by delicious iron oxide oozings (see photo below) running and dripping in gullies and sunlight moving over the pale Frome Clay. I moved closer to 'Fault Corner', changed it's scale and therefore relationship with Burton Cliffs beyond West Bay, and have introduced weather and earth density. I take images back to the landscape regularly. The shifting earths, seasons and weather prompt me to make these changes to the work: depositions and erosion of a kind. At Eype's Mouth - looking towards Watton Cliff (West Cliff with West Bay beyond) I'm using middle Jurassic Strata as pigments- quite a humbling realisation. Reeds and grasses have established themselves on the lower slopes. Frome Clay (Fuller's Earth), a pale grey calcareous mudstone makes up the lower two thirds of the cliff. Forest marble Formation is at the top (lumps have tumbled down and its brown ferruginous blocks are scattered at the base of the cliff). RUST caught my attention in The Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2013. In the piece below, the sculpural form has been clothed by it and ultimately it will be dissolved by it... TREE 2010
Ai Weiwei's Tree 2010 (tree sections and metal bolts) is now on display in the newly extended Tate Modern. Earlier on this summer I saw the sections being unpacked from large wooden boxes and set out on the floor like a giant jigsaw. I couldn't quite make out what the material was from the balcony looking down to level 1. The tree sections looked like wood with metal bolts - yet I knew that I couldn't assume that it was so - as the intention of the artist is not illusionistic. I was in no doubt of the material used in Iron Tree 2013 that I drew outside the chapel at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The whole thing- tree and bolts alike- were flaming red with rust. Pools of rust-rain water caught within its segmented structure served as pigment to inform these quick drawings. The reason why I was so familiar with the unassembled parts of Tree 2010 was that it acted as a mould for the piece I drew in Yorkshire.
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