In October I was wondering where else can I take my work, how else can I show my interest in nature but in a new and exciting way. I had already explored mud painting and leaving materials outside but I knew there were other ways to capture nature. Then I had this idea of growing my own bit land, where I had control over how often it got watered, what soil went in, and if any seeds should be placed in.
The boxes were made by cutting a metre long (close to a metre) bit of wood into four bits and then nailing them together to make a frame. I then attached a very thick bit of cardboard to the bottom. After the box was made, I filled in any gaps with filler (filler that you place in holes in walls and ceilings) and then I had the decision to either leave the frame in its natural wooden state or paint it. I decided to paint it white, I thought that I wanted the control over this piece, obviously I could not control if anything grew but the rest I did, so I wanted it to have an unnatural look to it. After I had made one box, I decided it just wasn’t enough, so I made four. These took a long time to finish as I wanted them to be perfect, to be tidy as I wasn’t sure what the gardens were going to look like at the end at least I would know one thing would look right.
Before I had started on these and when the idea had just came to me, I was talking to fellow art student Emily and she mentioned an artist who had an exhibition very similar to my idea that was then on display in Tate Modern, Abraham Cruzvillegas.
He made numerous amounts of triangular shaped wooden boxes and filled them with soil, collected from parks all around London. His work is done on a much larger scale so there is a larger chance that something would grow in some of his plant boxes. I visited this exhibition Empty Lot (2015) and what I was expecting was completely different to what there is. I don’t know why but I was expecting much larger boxes that you would walk between to get a closer look at what was growing but actually the only way you can get a look at these plant boxes was too look down from either sides of the balcony. A lot of the boxes actually had nothing growing in but some did and the different soils had very different colours to them, making it clear that were collected from different parts of London.
However art makes itself evident, it shall remain, above all, raw source material in all its natural, unstable, physical, chaotic and crystalline states: solid, liquid, colloidal and gaseous. It is the joy of energy.
2002 São Paulo Biennial
This quote by Cruzvillegas is very fitting with Empty Lot, he has taken something that is completely raw and natural and has turned it into an installation that represents the city, chance and hope. There were lights that were lit onto the plant pots and they were also watered throughout the six months it was on display. After this there was only the chance and hope that something will grow. Chance and hope is what I rely on as well with my work. There was no guarantee that something will grow.
Four Months On.
It was at the start of January that I was finally able to place soil into my wooden plant pots and now we are nearly at the start of April and in three of the boxes not much has changed but the fourth one has started to grow moss and a stem with two leaves at the end.
This is very exciting for me and I feel that if I can correct the other boxes, then I could end up with four boxes with life in. With the box that is growing something, there seemed to be a lot of condensation on the clear plastic wrapping (I had placed wrapping over the top of the boxes to keep the moisture in) so I have sealed up the other boxes as much as I can in hoping they would keep the moisture in and hopefully this is will cause growth to occur. Another thing I have done is I have picked seeds from random flowers on the fields and placed these seeds into the soil, hoping to promote more growth.
Quote taken from http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/hyundai-commission-2015-abraham-cruzvillegas/introduction
