Process & practice - anticipation & risk 6th April to 8th April 2006 When working on temporary public art exhibitions, one has to depend largely on trust and belief. Essentially, the commissioner has to select on the belief that the artist commissioned will be able to create a new work, in a given period of time, with an absolute rock-solid reliability. It can be a gamble. One is always up against the unknown, never more so than working in a rural environment such as the Forest of Dean. All planning of a public event carries with it anticipation and risk, but few are as unnerving as working in an unstable location, with little or no infrastructure to underpin it. Some sculpture parks have residential accommodation, galleries and studios, but the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trust has no such thing. The Trust itself is ephemeral in so many ways. 'The Trust' was formed to act as guardians for the land art which was installed in the then quiet, remote Beechenhurst area, in the mid 1980s. Only at the turn of the century was the decision made to begin a period of commissioning new works, including both temporary and permanent. But the landscape is no longer remote and unspoilt, ironically due to the very presence of the sculptures, the Beechenhurst area has become an exceptionally popular area for tourism. With a series of activity since 2000, the Sculpture Trust has been experimenting with a range of commissioning programmes. Temporary and permanent works have been programmed and, most notably, an after-dark festival of lightworks occurred in 2002, at the end of foot & mouth. The realisation that there are big audiences out there who want to see art in the forest was clearly demonstrated by huge visitor numbers to Lightshift, over 40,000 people came in only one week. So it was back to the drawing board for the Trustees, to evaluate what had happened and why, the strengths and weaknesses of such mass appeal activity. It was decided to leave a gap before considering the possibility of a follow up to Lightshift. That gap of over three years led to 'reveal' being planned, which is where I joined the Trust to deliver that programme. It was hoped that although popular opinions still held that Lightshift was amazing and fantastic, enough time had lapsed to allow new works, coming from a more research-led practice, to exist without direct comparison to their huge, spectacular predecessor. The truth is, there will never be enough gap in time, as when people mention Lightshift, even now, with smiles of reminiscence on their faces and rosy memories, they talk of it as happening 'last year'. They forget the traffic bedlam, the safety risks taken, the overrun of budget. Despite huge effort to quell the buzz that Lightshift Two is coming, it is too deeply planted in people's experience to erase it, to wipe their disks clean of afterimages of lasers and fireworks, flashes and bangs. So onto Reveal, fewer artists, quieter works and a publicity campaign emphasising it as an art exhibition, not a festival of light. It is, of course, impossible to avoid the notion of spectacle when, in truth, a tea-light lit in a forest has such a visual impact on its environment. The works could not fail to be spectacular, even though the term is so often considered derogatory. The works that were shown were in direct response to the forest - physically, conceptually and poetically. They drew both literally and metaphorically from the place they inhabited, referencing ochre mining activity in the area, coal mining and the concept of trees creating a portal between urban and rural. You could split the works into two approaches - Laura Daly and Katayoun Pasban Dowlatshahi made work that is research led in traditional terms, inspired by local history and landscape, whilst Nathaniel Rackowe and Tabatha Andrews responded more physically and created works that confronted the trees and their occupation of the space - clashing urban with rural in a very direct, uncompromising manner. Tabatha created filmworks that offered a visual space of transition, a glimpse of the other side, making almost minimalist references to how we perceive the forest in terms of popular imagination and mythology. The Forest as a gateway, enter at your risk. The trees as guardians of this wild and threatening place, brought to order by seemingly theatrical effects, made simply with light-upon-nature. There were suggestions of the fairytale here, but also of the horror story. Think Grimms meets Terminator - twinkling foliage and violent slashes of light, it was there to disturb the audience, making them see the forest anew. Nathaniel seemingly decided to ignore this romantic woodland of dreams and mythology and instead deliberately imposed his masculine urban vision onto this restless place. Order from chaos. Whilst one of his works used light to expose the underbelly of the environment - scanning the surrounds and drawing straight lines to bisect it visually, the other had a truly alien presence. Glowing wires constructed a 3D illusion of a digitally rendered wireframe drawing. Suspended high up in the trees, the rectangular form appeared to move in and around them, constricting and containing them, ignoring their structural dominance, cutting through their power. Suggestions of urban neon, of advertising, of technology, juxtaposed against the rural defying it.  Carolyn Black, May 2006 | | 
Laura Daly, Trafalgar, 2006  
Katayoun Dowlatshahi,
Light Shafts, 2006  
Katayoun Dowlatshahi, Bell Pitt, 2006 
Tabatha Andrews, Interference, 2006 
Tabatha Andrews, Dilation, 2006 
Nathaniel Rackowe, Forest Scan, 2006 
Nathaniel Rackowe, Spin, 2006 |
