Black Sphere 2004, charred oak
©David Nash
Image Jonty Wilde

Kew Gardens have announced that Kingston alumnus David Nash, one of the UK’s most prolific sculptors, will produce and exhibit his work across the Gardens from April 2012 through to April 2013.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is delighted to announce that David Nash, one of the UK’s most prolific sculptors, will produce and exhibit his work across the Gardens from April 2012 through to April 2013.

The exhibition will open to members of the public in June 2012, with sculptures, installations, drawings and film in place throughout the Gardens, glasshouses, and exhibition spaces. Nash will work at Kew on a ‘wood quarry’ from April 2012, creating new pieces for the exhibition using trees from the Gardens that have come to the end of their natural life. This ongoing work will form part of the exhibition, with the fruits of his labour on display from October 2012.

In a career spanning 40 years, David Nash has created over 2,000 sculptures out of wood, many of them monumental in scale. These sculptures are sometimes carved or partially burned to produce a charred surface. His main tools are a chainsaw and an axe to carve the wood, and fire to char it. Through his work, he has gained a deep understanding of the properties of trees. The artistic process itself is, for Nash, deeply collaborative – between the artist, his material, and the natural world. He adopts a responsive and adaptable approach, allowing nature to dictate the direction that his creations will take. This approach reflects the character of the exhibition as a whole – the viewing experience will change and evolve from visit to visit, due to the nature of the materials used, the changing seasons that shape and colour Kew Gardens so dramatically, and the display of new work that will be created on site, throughout the course of the exhibition.

Working with wood made available naturally (for example by storms, lightning or disease), Nash excavates the tree by means of a ‘wood quarry’. His chosen term indicates the sheer physical effort of working with a whole tree, as well as suggesting a sense of drawing on something pre-existent. The quarry is an outdoor workshop – a work of art in itself – and takes place over several months.

A shared commitment to the environment make Nash and Kew the perfect partnership; a combined force that will inspire visitors to understand their place in the natural world. Nash’s philosophy places particular emphasis on the fundamental role that nature plays in humanity’s continued existence. He sees the environment as our ‘outer skin’; we are not separate from it or its master – everything that we do impacts upon it, for better or for worse. His work results in sculptures in which form and material have a deep mutual sympathy, and retain some of the essence of their original form. Many of these wooden sculptures take forms that allude to man’s dependence on nature, and specifically wood, through the ages. Tables, ladders, chairs, and shelters, all basic human survival tools and utensils, all recur in Nash’s work.

This idea of nature as not only hugely inspiring, but also as a provider of our most fundamental survival materials, is reflected in Kew’s Economic Botany Collection, which illustrates the extent of human use of plants around the world. The huge variety of objects within the collection ranges from artefacts made from plants to raw plant materials, including a large collection of wood samples. Uses range from food, medicine and utensils, to social activities and clothing. The collection underpins the notion, that plants maintain the health of the world we live in – allowing us to have clean water, fertile farmland, productive seas, and a balanced climate.

Nash’s relationship with and ever-growing knowledge of his chosen material – wood –sits in perfect accordance with the conservation work that Kew carries out both in the UK and across the globe. Kew’s work with trees involves identifying new species, protecting areas of forest diversity, researching their ancestry, DNA, anatomy and chemistry, and studying the fungi that helps them to grow, and eventually, to decay and be recycled. Through projects such as the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, Kew can share information, assist in research and in planting new areas of forest, and advise on long term planning.

Steve Hopper, Director (CEO) and Chief Scientist of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, says: “We are extremely honoured to host an exhibition of the work of David Nash, a significant and innovative artist whose approach resonates with an important facet of Kew’s work – to encourage people to look at plants and the natural world differently. An exhibition of this kind really helps to convey a simple but vital concept; that we are part of the web of life and nature responds to how we care for it. David Nash at Kew illustrates that nature can act as a great source of inspiration for artists and scientists alike, and brings these two exploratory disciplines together.”

EXHIBITION TIMELINE

• April 2012 – The Wood Quarry (Nash working on site)

The wood quarry will be sited on Cedar Vista, within view of the Pagoda. A group of volunteers will answer visitors’ questions whilst Nash and his team will work with the trees and offcuts. A black board with chalk drawings will illustrate the ‘work plan of the day’ and how this evolves over the wood quarry duration. The sculpture that emerges from the wood quarry will be positioned in situ and also relocated to both indoor and outdoor spaces in the Gardens.

• June 2012 – The launch

The exhibition, which will open to the public in June, will run throughout the Gardens as well as within the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, the Temperate House, and, in the autumn, the Nash Conservatory. Twelve existing outdoor works will be situated throughout the grounds, and will be supplemented with new works created on-site during the exhibition period.

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art will be used for the duration of the Nash exhibition, with additional work to be added in October 2012.

The centrepiece of the gallery exhibition will be a large scale cork dome sculpture, which will be accompanied by cork tree drawings. Key works from the Nash collection, including Ash Dome and Bluebell Ring, as well as Wooden Boulder, will be presented in the gallery through drawings, photography and film. The Family Tree drawings will be presented in the gallery’s foyer. These illustrate the development of Nash’s practice from Tower I (1967) to the present day, depicting the different branches of thought and expression that Nash’s work embodies.

The Temperate House will house a host of Nash’s sculptures. These pieces, placed inside the house, will enable a narrative to unfold between the sculptures, the plants and the structure of the glasshouse itself; evoking the form and scale of the building, and the relationship between the living plants and wood-derived sculptures.

• October 2012 – Autumn

The Nash Conservatory will be used as an exhibition space, when a new phase of the exhibition opens in October. Nash will select sculptures with forms that are in sympathy or juxtaposition with the architecture of this historic conservatory. The Crack and Warp series will be a key feature for this space, and new columns will be made using wood from Kew and Wakehurst Place. The Crack and Warp seriess are a wonderful example of the collaboration with nature that characterises Nash’s work. The artist selects the wood and makes the cuts, the air then takes over and dries the wood, producing astonishing cracks and warps in accordance with the characteristics of the particular wood species used.