Tatton Park Biennial: Sited Commissions
ABIGAIL REYNOLDS plans to work with Japanese Knotweed as a sculptural form, physically elevating the invader to a new status – above the statue of ‘Fame’ in the Tower Garden.
For the Happy Immigrant (Japanese Knotweed)
This large sculpture is sited in the Tower Garden, displaying specimens of Japanese Knotweed.
Japanese knotweed was introduced to Tatton Park in the Victorian period and has subsequently become a problem, growing along the lake though the gardeners constantly destroy it. It is listed among six 'invasive weeds' that need to be controlled in the UK (see this page).
The form of the sculpture contains a jumble of references from Japanese culture and contrasts strongly with Tatton's celebrated 1910 Japanese garden, though the sculpture links the Tower Garden with the Japanese garden and the lake by its subject matter.
The Tower Garden and adjacent Rose Garden are restrained and carefully groomed. Reynolds' outsized, vigorous and colourful sculpture underscores the alien status of Japanese Knotweed in the park.
For the Happy Immigrant (Japanese Knotweed) straddles the existing statue of 'fame' in The Tower Garden. Overshadowing this original feature of the park mirrors the way that Japanese Knotweed crowds out native plants, attaining a kind of fame of its own thereby.
The sculpture is homage to the success of Japanese knotweed, not only within Tatton Park but across the world.
Installation view
Biography
Abigail Reynolds works with trajectories, networks and ordering systems. Rather than taking an image as a starting point for making work, she sets in motion a system and set of processes that result in a form being created. Reynolds works with materials to bring fugitive knowledge and connections into the immediacy of physical experience.
Her work often involves layered collaborations with institutions and disciplines outside the art context as well as within it. She has worked with scientists on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, with the Metropolitan Police, and with a group of people with dyslexia at the Serpentine Gallery.
Abigail Reynolds teaches at the Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford University and lives and works in London and also St Just, Penwith, Cornwall where she runs a residency programme with her partner Andy Harper. She studied English Literature at St Catherine’s College Oxford University.
Shows include From A Distance Wallspace, New York 2007; Behemoth, Danielle Arnaud 2007; After the Fact, Tullie House, Carlisle 2005; Offside at The Hugh Lane, Dublin 2005; and New Contemporaries 2003. Solo shows: ShapeShift: landscape in motion, Durlston castle, Dorset 2007; Mount Fear, Mu, Eindhoven 2004 and The Frozen Sea Firstsite, Colchester 2004.