Tag: nature
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A Field Guide to East London Wildlife
Humans are not the only species undergoing a process of urbanisation. It is well documented that we have made a mess of this planet, and – depending on who you speak to – it may be too late to do anything about it. But as the world gradually turns to concrete, and species extinction continues…
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Rye’s Valhalla
Influx Press’s editor-at-large, Gary Budden, and author of Marshland, Gareth E. Rees, venture into Rye Harbour with inadequate footwear and a 1904 guide to Sussex. They discover more than they’d bargained for… BUDDEN: I switch at Ashford International. I hate Ashford. The train rumbles off. I rub my eyes, wishing I’d slept more….
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Tasked to Hear
On 30th March 2013 Mark Peter Wright made his way to a point in South Gare – a two-and-a-half-mile stretch of reclaimed land to the south of Teesmouth – and stopped. He made a note of the conditions (temperature, wind speed, humidity) and of his own body temperature. At 12pm, he switched on his audio…
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Modern Naturalism
In 1958, the great Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser published the Mould Manifesto against Rationalism in Architecture. In it he declared, with characteristic chutzpah, that: “Only the engineers and scientists who are capable of living in mould and producing mould creatively will be the masters of tomorrow.” As far as we’re aware, few have taken up…
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What Was Once the Threshing Barn
Public/private, urban/rural, commercial/not-for-profit: it’s not like the waters between the two have ever been crystal clear, but now, with the opening in Somerset of the latest outpost of contemporary art giants Hauser & Wirth (London, Zurich, New York) the silt has been stirred up and it all seems just that little bit muddier than before….
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Walking in the Sky
A small brown kestrel rises over the crest of a hill and pauses, hanging in the wind, scanning the fields below. With a tilt of its wings, it shifts vantage point twice, three times, hangs for a moment, then suddenly slides downwards, a gleam of silver under the high sun. Six foot from the ground,…
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The Beast is not only the Tiger
The top floor of a modernist apartment block seems an unlikely location for the studio of an artist best-known for his engagement with botany. Nonetheless this is where we find Alberto Baraya, one of Colombia’s most prominent contemporary artists: his working environment not the cavernous white-walled spaces favoured by Bogotá’s other leading practitioners, but a…
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The Sensorial Invisibility of Plants
Laura Cinti’s work stretches the boundaries of our understanding of plant behaviour. Cinti is best known as an artist who works with biology, and, in addition to her own practice, she is also co-founder (with Howard Boland) and co-director of C-LAB, an internationally recognised interdisciplinary art platform that generates and participates in both artistic and…
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The Story of a Single Rock
Like many stories, this one begins with a rock, in fact one rock amongst many: the shifting shingle which geographically defines and continually redefines the salt marshes of Orford Ness. When contemporary artist Anya Gallaccio made her first trip to the shingle spit of the Ness, it was not the accidental sculptures of wire and…
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No Rural Fantasy
The anti-pastoral of Cynan Jones I’m a Londoner through and through; a city person fascinated by everything the city is not. The rural worlds outside of mine are compelling, attractive, and occasionally frightening. I admit, as I head into my thirties, I feel the pull of an idea of being out in the country somewhere….
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New Wine, Old Pots
When it comes to starting afresh, sometimes it helps to acknowledge a lack of control. That’s the thought that begins to crystallise while visiting the headquarters of De Martino, one of Chile’s most innovative winemakers. We’re standing in a large, bare, warehouse, just south of Santiago, among rows of several hundred clay amphorae. It’s like…