The lovely people at the Ropewalk Gallery asked me to make some work for their new garden.... you can see one small end of the building here, but its actually about 200m long - it used to be a rope factory. The garden space shares the dimensions and orientation of the main building and was clearly once part of the building but was demolished long ago.
This started me thinking of things whose presence is felt only in their absence.
The building itself, and all the missing workers from the factory, their ropemaking techniques, all the old maritime connections - the whole area is riddled with Saxon placenames - and with the proximity of the Humber (you can see the bridge in the background, top left) with its vestigal port/harbour nearby at the Barton boatyard, the place seemed haunted by its history; the prescence of things absent.
So I tried to make the pieces for the garden only half there - they have a light presence, and parts of each whole are missing. And, as with all artworks, the ghost of their maker is always floating around somewhere.

Particularly with larger work, I seem to have a habit of making things that work best as the viewer moves around them and perspectives change... which is great as far as the work goes but is a little frustrating when you want to take still photos: the details tend to get lost against the background. I actually took loads of pictures from every conceivable direction, and even had access to other pictures taken by the ropewalk, but these seem to be the most useful. Anyway, I hope you get a decent general impression of how things look...
if not - fancy a trip to Humberside? www.the-ropewalk.com

 

 

 

Below are pictures of each component of the commission:
each sphere becomes less complete further from the gallery until the final piece is almost a hemisphere.
There is also a stainless steel sign consisting of symbols, or heiroglyphs, that I thought described the function and location of the art centre.