‘Causa Finalis: Boijmans’ is a work commissioned for the 25th anniversary of the ‘city collection’. My response was to work in relation to the spaces’ large windows, working in a way that rather than covering the view plays with the glimpse as you mover around the work. I made seven tubular steel sculptures with laser cut aluminium sheets draped across them. Through a process of abstraction and translation, I derived these forms from the eighteenth century topiary garden designed by the Scottish architect Robert Lorimer (1864-1929) for Earlshall Castle in Scotland.
Recently the art of topiary seems increasing pertinent a discipline to me. Especially in today’s media driven society in which perception increasingly becomes fragmented and truncated, there are two aspects in topiary, which assume antagonistic qualities. Firstly its time, it could take up to 30 years to become fully formed. Secondly its dedication and focus. By working with the idea of Topiary I deliberately try to posit the idea that an artwork needs not be about the immediate, the now, or the spectacular. This being the case then art does not have to be constantly in need of attention or appeal to be looked at and thus is free to speak in different tones or at moments even not at all. All of which frees art from the romantic pressure to provide the escape from the deadlock of the systems in which we live and allows it to speak in its own voice.
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