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Abi Freckleton
Proposal for Site Specific Installation at Wells Catherdral, Palm Churchyard
The Last Place (II) - resting, in the shadow of itself (working title)
Reflecting on the environment of the churchyard as a resting place for souls, and as the site of historical architectural remains, its form will appear as something inbetween a collosal fallen headstone and the wall of an ancient ruin scattered into a pile of rubble.
This work will be the second iteration of an ongoing project The Last Place - a nomadic, shapeshifting sculpture that journeys to different sites, reformed anew in each place but always made of the same material. Created using all the unfired clay and ceramic shards remaining in my studio, the first iteration of this work was a direct cast of that space - made by pressing the aggregated clay/ceramic material into the walls. It marked a place that was ‘mine’ for over 5 years, before I lost it (as is common for so many artist in the current climate) to property redevelopment.​
The work explores ideas prevalent in my practice more widely - of the relationship between human and nature, the memory held within material, the reciprocity between the visible (seeing, image, light) and the tangible (material, object, surface), and the entanglement of time, space and matter.
The theme of ‘flowing light’ has been considered in the context of this entanglement - light, in fact only visible to the human eye when it interacts with something material, or in its absence (when an object blocks the flow, to cast a shadow). At Wells, the sculpture forms a shadow of its former self - marking the distorted outline of an absent/lost space, remembering (or imagining) its interaction with the flow of sunlight.
Stone-like pale grey slabs sit directly on the grass, a chaotic geometric shape splayed across the ground. A series of interlocking distorted rectangles. The shadow of 4 walls. Walls of a space that is not here, it does not exist anymore, yet it casts this shadow - a concrete, solid shadow. Low to the ground (the sculpture will not be more than 20cm high), like a shadow - its edges will be sharp and straight in places, fragmenting and dispersing in others.
​From a distance it will appear a mottled pale grey - similar to the gravestones that surround it, but on closer inspection is speckled with glints of sheen and colour - fragments of glazed ceramic embedded within its surface.
Previous works using a similar material
The work is designed to be modified by time. Whether there is rain, freeze, sun over the month of the exhibition it is expected its form will soften and slightly crack, to appear that it is slowly dissolving into the ground. At the end of the exhibition the large majority of the material will be salvaged and returned to the artists studio (to be remade again, into the next iteration of The Last Place, wherever that may be.)
A small amount of clay may leach into the soil, though this would not be expected to have any long term impact (clay is a natural material, non-toxic and is one of the major components of the ground everywhere). The grass will likely die underneath the sculpture - leaving an imprint (something I would like to capture as part of the ongoing project) but it will recover in the Spring.
The deconstruction and re-making of the work is as much the idea as the forms it takes at each place. At Wells I intend to create an accompanying video work that captures this process. It will use documentary footage of the making process alongside that of the sculpture interacting with the light and shadow of the churchyard with its own form and surface (the glazed fragments on its surface will interact with sunlight as it moves across its surface through the day) to further explore the theme of 'flowing light' in the context of my practice's wider concerns. I envisage this video being the artwork displayed inside the gallery during the private view (given the sculpture itself will not be visible after dark).
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