Traces

Two of the works made this summer appear only in documentary form in the exhibition. The landscape in which they were made is an integral part of them and this cannot be transported. The first was made in Márokföld, Hungary and the second in a Slovakian clay pit. They are both related to archaeological digs revealing traces of the past.

The exhibited sculptures I like to think of as memory traces. For example, the largest “Anchor, Vrbnik” recalls an anchor that I saw on the harbour in this small town in Croatia. It had become so encrusted with barnacles that it only bore traces of its original shape, having become completely transformed into something else. As these works are made using an artificial resin the suggestion is that they are “artificial” copies of the real thing – that somewhere there is the real sculpture of which these are copies, perhaps traces of the original.

In the vitrine we may find several stamps with which I have been recently using to stamp the earth. One was used in both the land art works, marking the exact centre of the circular works, as a kind of signature. Apart from these traces of some smaller forms are included.

Finally there are some drawings of a recent series which dealt with the way in which sunlight “moves” across surfaces.

Colin Foster