Observations of Brutality and Resilience.

Over recent months I’ve been working with my own photographs and drawings of barbed wire fencing stapled to trees to develop a body of work that begins to express links between the abuse of nature and our bodies.

Observing the resilience of these trees that grow around the brutally stapled wire, and seeing forms reminiscent of human body parts in their scars and deformations, I’ve been broadening the range of materials I use in my new sculptures. I have a collection of wire and rusty metal objects found in the landscape along with curious domestic detritus that also finds itself discarded there. Added to that is a growing pile of old pillows, duvets, sheets and cleaning cloths that have become so worn out and stained that they are destined to be thrown out.

The salvaged wire is used to bind these soft materials around a steel armature fixed to the gabion baskets that I’ve been using for a while. The forms can then break out of the constraints of the steel mesh in an echo of the way in which trees will grow around the constraints imposed upon them. The gabions are used to create the stability needed in a free standing sculpture. Thinking about the geology of the area, they are filled with chalk and flint as well as with layers of discarded bedding, brick, plastic and metal found in the landscape, to create a sturdy base.

The act of binding the soft forms, allowing the wire to work like a tourniquet or rather, a ligature, and attaching rusty steel objects that can be twisted to make it tighter, adds an element of implied violence to the work. Each piece relates to another with the ‘limbs’ and wire protrusions reaching across the space between the forms. My intention is to show a whole group together but, so far, only one pair has had a public outing – above right, Breaking Surface at The West Downs Gallery in Winchester.

Although colour is muted in the work, it is an element that is carefully considered. The stains of the fabric, the rusty metal and the found objects are rich in colour and that colour is also a signifier of the abject, of ageing, and of the materiality of the discarded. There is an ambiguous provenance to the materials and a question mark over their age. I will choose some elements for inclusion partly for their aesthetic qualities and partly for their symbolic value, as well as for the physical job they do in building a three dimensional form. The process requires much doing and undoing.

Although the forms emerge as individuals they definitely seem to ask to be displayed as pairs or groups. There is a relationship between them, suggesting dialogue or sparring.

The most recent are three-legged forms that move away from the weighted, layered gabion base. These are more animate and suggest mobility. Their corporeality reflects that of the viewer’s body through scale – they are about my height. Through their wobble – they have potential for movement. They intend to remind us of our bodies but through their absurdity suggest hybrids, or interspecies collaboration. The not-so-human outcome of symbiogenesis, perhaps.

All photographs by Liz Clifford.