Heading to Edinburgh this month? There will be a REALLY cool event by the Edinburgh College of Art, entitled MILESTONE – live stone carving throughout the Edinburgh Art Festival. Related exhibition: 1 – 30 August 2009. Further details below.
Saturday 1 – 30 August 2009; Tuesday-Sunday 10am-4pm (closed Mondays)
Free admission.
Edinburgh College of Art, College Quad, outside the Main Building (entrance at either Lauriston Place or Lady Lawson Street).
Related exhibition: 1 – 30 August 2009; Monday - Thursday 10am - 6pm; Friday - Sunday 10am - 5pm; Free admission
Stone work at Cervietti workshop, Pietrasanta, Italy. Photo Jake Harvey
Milestone is a unique arts event for the Festival. Ten international sculptors will each carve a new sculpture in a 1 to 2 tonne block of stone of their choosing in the Art College quadrangle.
This stone carving event, the largest ever staged of its kind in Scotland, offers the public a rare opportunity to watch stone sculptors in the process of creating their work.
In addition to the Milestone carve, visitors can learn more about stone carving practices all over the world from the accompanying exhibition of films, photographs, interviews, tools, books and sculptures. From the magnificent examples of quarrying the earth’s matrix to the documented craft skills of stone artisans and toolmakers, these enlightening films and other collected data force a reassessment of how we think about ‘stone’ and the sculptors that work it.
Stone tools at Jaislmer, India. Photo Noe Mendelle
The Milestone carve and exhibition form part of the wider STONE project, a three-year eca research initiative, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, conceived and structured by sculptors Jake Harvey and Joel Fisher and filmmaker Noe Mendelle.
The stone sculptors participating in Milestone are: Joel Fisher (USA); Hayashi Takeshi (Japan); Jake Harvey (Scotland); Carlos Lizaraturry Moro (Spain); Gerard Mas (Spain); Atsuo Okamoto (Japan); Peter Randall Page (England); Sibylle Pasche (Switzerland); Daniel Silver (Israel); Susanne Specht (Germany). The group will also include Jessica Harrison (Scotland), working as STONE project’s dedicated PhD student.
MILESTONE SCULPTORS
Peter Randall-Page (England)
Peter Randall-Page was born in 1954. His work is informed by the study of organic forms and the underlying principles that determine organic growth. His work sometimes covers the surface of glacial erratics with the decorative urgency of plant form evoking the power found sometimes in primitive human embellishments. Peter will be assisted by David Brampton-Greene, a self-employed stone carver who has worked with Peter for 22 years. He epitomises the intelligence of the craftsman and is very articulate about how one engages with material. The artist and artisan relationship has been an interesting aspect of STONE project’s research, to be considered further.
Susanne Specht (Germany)
Susanne Specht was born in 1958. She utilises natural fractures and industrial stone off-cuts as a method of splitting and exploring stone’s history, composition and internal structure. Susanne creates large architectural works that seem to reference primeval shelters and draw our attention to both the material of stone and man’s origin and time-span.
Carlos Lizariturry Moro (Spain)
Carlos Lizariturry Moro was born in 1955. He lives and works in Croatia. Carlos’s stone sculptures are mostly carved in natural glacial boulders. His sculptures take form through a process of splitting, hollowing, re-assembling, with a minimal penetration of the boulder’s skin. It is through small apertures and linear incisions that he invites the viewer to explore the cathedral-like interiors of his sculptures. He was Eduardo Chillida’s assistant working closely with him to carve his sculptures in granite.
Gerard Mas (Spain)
Gerard Mas was born in 1976 in Sant Feliu de Guixols, Girona, Spain (Llotja Art School, Barcelona). Gerard’s strategy is to evoke 15th century Florentine portrait busts, applying his superb craft skills with a humour that can only be contemporary. Regardless of their colour, the stone surface of his figures always evokes the qualities of skin.
Sibylle Pasche (Switzerland)
Sibylle Pasche was born in 1976. She works out of several studios, primarily in Switzerland and Cararra. Sibylle’s observation and response to the rhythms of nature is simplified and transformed into beautifully crafted and sensual marble sculptures — anthropomorphic, primeval, and contemporary. Her sculptures, appearing to defy the weight and gravity of stone, seem light and transitory as they connect to the ground.
Hayashi Takeshi (Japan)
Hayashi Takeshi was born in 1956 and is currently Associate Professor of Sculpture at the Tokyo University of the Arts. His work is concerned with the space and the object, often using the qualities of stone that allow it to split along its own lines of energy. His sculptures are able to concentrate energy in a way that simultaneously evokes the sweep of landscape and physicality of place.
Atsuo Okamoto (Japan)
Atsuo Okamoto was born in 1951. He currently teaches in the School of Art and Design at Joshi University. He is concerned with the natural integrity of stone. For him, the splitting of stone is a form of drawing onto mass. His current ‘Turtle Project’ is concerned with the relationship of stone to the environment, both human and geographic.
Daniel Silver (Israel)
Daniel Silver was born in 1972. He initially learned the craft of stone carving by working with Zimbabwean sculptors and during this time produced families of heads in soapstone and spring-stone. Each head was carved with reference to historical individuals – specifically, of police portrait photographs of individuals on death row in America. His current work utilises figurative and animal sculpture fragments from art history as his starting point.
Joel Fisher (USA)
Joel Fisher was born in 1947. Formerly Chef d’Atelier Taille-Directe (Carving) at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris, his articulated interest in the ‘reductive mode’ began many years before in 1969. His work always attaches importance to the most basic ontological issues. His unusual drawings are the sources that precede his sculptural material and processes it. The translation into three-dimensionality is always a concern with the shape of a future object that might set thoughts in motion.
Jake Harvey (Scotland)
Jake Harvey was born in 1948 and is currently the Professor of Sculpture at eca. He carves elemental sculptures resonating with archaeological and architectural traces – these often referencing the presence of maker, user and function in the work. He hones and shapes his sculptures to cultivate sense stimulus in the viewer and uses negative interlocking space as a means of forming physical and meditative passages of void and silence.
Talking about the significance of the Milestone carve, lead researcher and participating stone sculptor Professor Jake Harvey says: ‘We hope the sculptures made during this event will stimulate debate about the use of stone in contemporary art. Exposing the process of making these sculptures in this way will generate an awareness of the involvement of tactility and the senses.’
Staged as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2009, Milestone will be accompanied by a programme of tours, talks and events.
For more information, please see: http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art
• The stone works created at Milestone will tour to Yorkshire Sculpture Park in April 2010. Tour venues beyond Spring 2010 still to be confirmed.
• Edinburgh College of Art has an international reputation as one of the most successful independent art colleges in the UK, as well as statistically being one of the most popular. Founded in 1907, but with a history dating back to the 18th century, the College is now home to over 1,700 full-time students studying a range of programmes across art and design, architecture and landscape architecture, and visual communication at undergraduate, postgraduate and research degree level. The College is an accredited institution of the University of Edinburgh. For further information visit www.eca.ac.uk
• The Arts and Humanities Research Council [AHRC] supports world-class research that furthers our understanding of human culture and creativity. For further information, see the website: http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art
On the Edinburgh Art Festival: Ranging from major exhibitions by leading British and international artists to work by a new generation of talent, the 2009 EAF programme sees 50 participating galleries, both permanent and temporary, including 11 spaces new to the Festival.
For full programme information, see the EAF website: www.edinburghartfestival.com
Feature photo: Carrara stone quarry, Tuscany, copyright Jake Harvey
ALl information contained herein provided by the Edinburgh College of Art.