Output details

'Stone Appreciation', Collaborative Artwork (with Mark Dunhill) exhibited at Gallery Fleur, Kyoto, 2011

Commissioned by Masao Kobayashi and Toshihiro Komatsu for the Gallery Fleur, I worked in collaboration with Mark Dunhill to test collaborative practice methods for gathering and translating data collected from the Bowder Stone (the largest free-standing stone in the UK) into a transportable new sculpture and installation.

Building on our research into the traditional art form Suiseki, (translated as Stone Appreciation) studied during residencies in Japan (2007, 2010), this project investigates the cultural significance of naturally free-standing rocks, their relationship to sculpture and photography, tourism, souvenirs, the sublime, process, materiality, collaboration and performative making.

Suiseki are stones that resemble miniaturised landscapes, collected and presented on tailor made stands bringing ‘untamed nature’ into the domestic setting. In Zen rock gardens, stones, individually unremarkable in scale or shape, are installed to become objects of deep contemplation. Meanwhile in Western culture the Myth of Sisyphus and common metaphors: ‘between a rock and a hard place’; ‘like getting blood out of a stone’; ‘deaf as a stone’, indicate more negative associations. Our collection, dating back to 1890, of picture postcards and other memorabilia relating to free-standing boulders suggests other more complex narratives and associations.

Stone Appreciation involved 3 key elements: a full sized fabric ‘toile’ from the Bowder Stone, reconstructed as a landscape in the gallery supported by a structure of over 200 wooden stands plotted against a diagram of the rock; a wall based work incorporating 80 different photographic postcards of the Stone acting like film stills moving around the Stone over a hundred year period; and a video of our collaborative process for measuring and recording the stone that emphasised the physical encounter and proposing ‘measuring’ as both interpretive and performative.

The SA Study Collection drew from over 300 artefacts and images relating to cultural uses of stones and involved a student research workshop.