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ANGELA WRIGHT

viewable from 15 Oct to 15 Mar 2013
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MAKING THE WORK    
Photos: Angela Wright / David Carr-Smith

"Leaf Ball" was conceived  as a work in two stages. The first as a 'simple' art work made in the studio from the park's bush prunings and placed on the lawn of the Lodge at its west entrance, in sync with a art exhibition in the Lodge. In the second stage Angela enlarged the ball in situ using a different method and materials - during this stage park visitors could view the work 'growing' on its site whenever a new round of bush prunings became available.

In the three weeks before the agreed date for placing it on the lawn the object was made in the artist's private studio, to which prunings from the park were delivered. It was the season for bush pruning and the leaf sprays were beautifully various, the ball grew and absorbed these, passing through delightful kalidoscopic changes of colour and texture. It reached a kind of tight formal stability soon before delivery day and once on the Lodge lawn, in spite of (and in a certain respect because of) its small size and its precise compactness (resulting from its mode of making - a process of continual addition and binding that resulted in an object that was solid, heavy, dense) it exercised a peculiar degree of visual attraction and as a consequence cast notice on the objects and features around it [ref below: '4 - FINDING THE BALL'S POSITION'].

After about a month as a static object the ball began a new phase. Angela started enlarging it again, this time as a spectacle for park visitors. The ball was now so heavy and difficult to roll it was no longer possible to work on its whole surface, also the park prunings had changed with the season and were now more stem-like, less leafy. These springy frond-stems changed the form of the ball more radically than any of the many changes during its private studio phase, when garden-twine had bound and smoothed its leaves. Now the stems were self-supporting and with their ends jammed into the ball they formed a net of linear arcs above its surface (like a diagram of air-routes). However this phase was never concluded - the making was still in progress when the object was removed from its site.

1 - SITE & SOURCE OF MATERIAL

2 - LONDON STUDIO - MAKING THE BALL

 

Studio work started on the 21st Oct 2012. 

 

21-09-2012	21-09-2012
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24-09-2012	24-09-2012
26-09-2012	26-09-2012
27-09-2012	27-09-2012
28-09-2012	28-09-2012
28-09-2012	29-09-2012
29-09-2012	29-09-2012
30-09-2012	03-10-2012
03-10-2012	03-10-2012
06-10-2012	06-10-2012
06-10-2012	06-10-2012
07-10-2012	08-10-2012
09-10-2012	10-10-2012
10-10-2012	10-10-2012
10-10-2012	11-10-2012
11-10-2012	11-10-2012
12-10-2012	13-10-2012
13-10-2012	13-10-2012

 

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3 - INSTALLING THE BALL 

Installing began on 15th Oct 2012.

15-10-2012	15-10-2012
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15-10-2012	15-10-2012
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15-10-2012

 

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4 - FINDING THE BALL'S POSITION

As an 'installation' (inserted as an addition into its location), rather than a 'sculpture' (usually intended to be a didactic 'focal-point' of its location), the Ball's environment adds to its character.

There are a lot of objects scattered around this entry corner of the park - if it wasnt for the vague control of habitual placing-conventions (eg 'symmetry') one might describe it as "an accumulation of litter", each added to the scene without an aware visual assessment of already existing ones. 

In order to 'fit-in', the Ball's position among them had to be casual, inconsequential - it must appear to relate to them as items of litter relate: 'the perfect placing of the undesigned'. At the same time the Ball is distinct (and as art it's bound to be): its uniqueness depends from its uselessness - as the most useless object in the ensemble, even more self-contained in its unpracticality than the flower boarders or even the grass, it appears, like an apport, at the apex of uselessness.  

This position as 'the apex' makes it (potentially) the location's primary attention-focus, and the tension between this primary position in the attention of the viewer of the scene, and yet its apparantly gratutious pointlessness, stimulates the viewer's automatic process of meaning-fabrication or 'free-associating'. As a ball of the park's bush-prunings, perhaps the first association was 'a park-keeper's tidy-waste-ball, due for disposal'; however it's also 'a ball kicked onto the lawn'; and it's even 'as if it has rolled off the stone posts of the park's gateway' (this neo-classic motif is 'missing' from these). Its surface colours and strings emphasise its resemblance to (not only a football but) a globe of the world (and for those who have seen the navigation-limned globes that crown the west gateway of Wren's Greenwich Naval College, this idea of its resemblance to a 'world-globe' is reinforced by its previous association with this park's 'missing' gate-balls). 

Thus the (seeming) significance of the "Leaf-Ball" illuminated the medley of objects it had joined. Its special role as the formal peak and 'leader' of their randomness made them (freshly) visible as a 'collection', an 'ensemble', and via its own wierd lack of any certain purpose seemed to spread the question of the meaning of their presence.  

15-10-2012	15-10-2012
15-10-2012	15-10-2012
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15-10-2012	15-10-201

15-10-2012	15-10-2012
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5 - THE FINISHED WORK

The first version of the installation and the initial stage of the second version are shown on page-1:    

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