Rebecca Newman’s article (Financial Times 15 June 2021) is entitled “Art for the Soul: where culture, nature and wellbeing meet.” I find the article particularly interesting as it echoes many of the themes I explored in my Literature Review of December 2019.
As science amasses evidence for the power of nature to transform mood and enhance creativity, Newman showcases several artists who are demonstrating ways of intensifying these connections.
Psychiatrist Sue Stuart-Smith states:
“Such a relationship (with nature) brings solace on a biological level. It shifts our brain to a different mode of attention, brings cortisone levels down and activates our parasympathetic (rest) state, which calms and replenishes.” (Stuart-Smith, S. The Well-Gardened Mind. pub William Collins 2020.)
Miles Richardson is professor of Human Factors and Nature Connectedness at Derby University. He worked on a study with Natural England and found that time spent in nature related directly to increased life satisfaction and happiness. He maintains that art can help:
“It acts as a provocation or a prompt. It makes you pause. It makes you notice.”
The idea of pausing is a factor in the recent work of Edmund de Waal at the New Art Centre at Wiltshire estate Roche Court. During lockdown he moved his focus from his studio to the outdoors and created a set of Horton stone benches for the grounds. Their name is TACET – the musical definition of a pause.
“I wanted to make a place to rest and look at the landscape. Now there’s a crying need to be taken out of ourselves. Our lives have been diminished. We need a vista.” Says de Waal.
In her article, Newman draws our attention to the work of Jean Michel Orthoniel, an artist and sculptor who is celebrated for his large-scale floral works, with his work “La Rose des Vents” being unveiled as a permanent piece in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Although his work is not to my taste, I embrace his sentiments:
“I want to bring hope. As we come out of a period of sadness, I want to make work that encourages people to slow down, to leave their screens and look at nature to find solace in the world around us.” Othoniel, J.M.
Helsinki Biennial
Art installations and exhibitions around the world seem to be echoing these sentiments. This summer’s outdoor Helsinki Biennial “The Same Sea” contemplates humanity’s place within the Earth’s ecosystem.
The Same Sea Alicja Kwade Big Be-Hide
Helsinki Biennial Director Maija Tanninen-Mattila explains that the artworks will be framed by:
“a marvellous ecosystem with wildflowers and a thousand species of butterfly; this is an engagement with art where nature and weather are part of the experience.”
She explains:
“ . . in these challenging times, people long for art and cultural experiences . . .As we enter a new reality, it is integral to rethink existing patterns of behaviour and create safe experiences for engaging with art. Helsinki Biennial launches with a future-orientated vision, advocating ecological ethics and celebrating the synthesis of art and nature.”
One of the artists whose work is included in the Helsinki Biennial is Teemur Lehmusruusu. His work “House of Polypores” integrates natural processes with sound. Using sensors, he listens to decaying trees and converts their sounds into organ music! Sounds familiar? Checkout my blog “Meeting Merlin.” Merlin Sheldrake, in his book “Entangled Life” combines mushrooms with electronics and decaying wood. In Merlin’s case, he converts the sounds into drumming music. What a coincidence – there must be something exciting going on down there, perhaps Merlin and Teemu should join forces!
Teemu Lehmusruusu - note the cute fungi above his head.
Fondation Carmignac Exhibition.
Another location I would love to visit this summer is the Ile de Porquerolles - a nature reserve off the French Riviera – this summer’s Fondation Carmignac Exhibition is entitled “Sea of Imagination.”
Rather appropriately, visitors access the island by boat, in order to clear the mind before viewing the artworks, funded by Eduard Carmignac’s vision of:
“A place where artworks and nature could come together in communion.”
The exhibition consists of both indoor and outdoor works. The indoor exhibition spaces are transformed into an underwater natural history experience:
The Imaginary Sea intends to celebrate the sea as a precious and evocative resource . . . whose immensity has always fed our imagination.” (The Imaginary Sea website)
100 Fish Fountain, Bruce Naumen
The outdoor space was imagined by landscape designer Louis Benech where fifteen works of art have been created by artists who stay on the island and are inspired to create works that play with the surrounding ecosystem considering nature and our relationship to it.
Jaume Plensa, Les 3 Alchemistes Nils Udo, La Couvee Jeppe Hein, Path of Emotions
The works above left and centre invoke a sense of peace and wellbeing, a feeling of being at one with nature. The exhibit on the far right by Danish artist Jeppe Hein, “Path of Emotions” might invoke a more unusual response from the viewer. Inspired by the local nature’s hills, trees and bushes, it is constructed from lines of mirrors in a round labyrinth which reflect the surrounding yarrow plant. Visitors appear and disappear in the mirrors as they move around and experience the landscape from unusual perspectives, moving up, down, and even disappearing into the landscape!
Holiday time, anyone?
After Rebecca Newman’s tour of destinations for this year’s exhibitions (wouldn’t we all love to see the Golden Gate Bridge and Park, find happiness in Helsinki and clear our minds on that boat trip to the Ile des Porquerolles?) Then I remind myself of the great landscapes we have on our own doorstep and one of our own sculptors from Yorkshire who felt a deep connection to nature - our own Barbara Hepworth!
Hepworth’s connection to nature began at an early age. Driving along with her father across the countryside in his car, all she saw was sculpture – “everything was forms, shapes and texture.” The car became her hands as she “felt and touched the contours of the hills.”
On moving to St. Ives in 1939 she experienced a rekindling of her connection to landscape. In her “Landscape Sculptures” of the late forties she connected these stringed sculptures to nature.
“The strings were the tension I felt between myself, the sea, the wind or the hills.”
Landscape with strings, created by Hepworth in 1944, cast in 1961.
Pelagos, inspired by the bay where two stretches of land surround the sea on either side.
In 1946 Hepworth reflected:
“The main sources of my inspiration are the human figure and the landscape; also the one in relation to the other.” Her great work “The Family of Man” of 1970 consists of nine bronze sculptures which can be shown individually, in small groups, or all together. The artist wanted them to appear as if they “had risen from the ground” like geological formations.
The Family of Man
Ancestor 1, Parent 1 and Youth at the Roche New Art Centre this summer.
Ancestor 2, Ultimate Form and Parent 2.
Bride, Bridegroom and Young Girl.
So, where can we see Barbara Hepworth’s work this summer? In Wakefield of course! The Hepworth Wakefield presents the most expansive exhibition of her work since the artist’s death in 1975. Running from 21st of May 2021 until the 27th of February 2022. (Online only event 9th – 18th July 2021.) Hepworth’s large-scale works will be on show alongside rarely seen drawings, paintings and fabric designs. The exhibition will also give an insight into the technical aspects of her creative process using bronze, aluminium and lead crystal.
As I have been writing this entry in my journal, it seems so many artists and sculptors are seeking the same end – to explore the human connection to the natural world, creating works of great beauty in their efforts whilst challenging our perceptions of our own place in the natural world.
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