Laura’s Sigh was made immediately before Annemarie’s Gate. See two posts earlier. Closeness of time does not guarantee similarity!
The brief here was to employ similar processes to my last year’s exhibition at Australian Galleries, The Folded Forest. The finished work would be required to reduce morning glare from the sun, improve privacy from neighbours, and make a work which was engaging and poetic.
All the works from The Folded Forest employed cut and folded steel plate. A steel plate, any plate closes off air and space. These works sought to relax the plate’s authority. An opened plate has ears and eyes. We need to go through rather than be held by a wall. This garden provided the context for this opening and folding to be drawn out and extended.
Laura’s Sigh
Open sculpture, sculpture that is not bound by its objecthood is well suited to an outdoor space. Statues work well outside buildings by being well differentiated from them. Contrast frames.
(Open sculptures in front of buildings don’t generally work because of a lack of contrast.)
This opened work partly closes off the garden but lets enough garden through. Approached obliquely the work is relatively transparent.
Laura’s Sigh during installation.
Any work commissioned, is a statement. This work serves its functional purpose. It sits there though, does not declare itself as an artwork. It declares itself as a question mark. What is it? By asking ‘why’, ‘what’, everything around it is made more vivid, more wondrous. This is the function of art.
Laura’s Sigh set in the garden opposite the home.
The sculpture sits in the garden and speaks to the building. It speaks a different formal language but the languages understand and reinforce each other. The screen, the sculpture, is raw and unrefined. The building is sleek and leans, is suave.
It’s an even steady conversation.
The work is long but because you mostly walk past it, the leaves open and close. It cannot be apprehended at one moment like a painting can, but changes.
The work might be an inhalation or an exhalation. Whether it is a sigh of surrender or wonder depends upon the mood of the user or the time of day.
Laura’s Sigh without direct sun