Sculpture can often add vitality and form to a part of the garden that is shady or bland, but add colour and you have a lift that will vibrate right through the darker days of winter as well.
Our current Radley College ‘Footfall’ exhibition also includes the work of Old Radleians, and this spiralling red one by Ben Robinson, has movement, the shock of the red and the contrast of rusty metal on the other side of the spiralling strip. It is a simple concept, like an apple peeling, but its scale and use of colour really add something special to a darkish corner.
Even a more delicate and less intrusive sculpture like Christopher Townsend’s ‘Blue Lily’ will call out from amongst the foliage with its wonderful note of kingfisher blue. In the case of this one in my own garden, placing it under a Blenheim Orange apple tree means it ‘grows’ apples in the Autumn as they fall into its waiting petals.
Colour can be subtle as with Piotr Gargas’ use of gold on his ‘Scroll’ stone carving, or with Cookie Scottorn’s internal treatment of her ceramic vase.
But it can go to the ultimate extreme in this abstract form by Anne Gingell in a brilliant yellow steel structure that will keep any winter sunshine blazing for weeks, or Ama Menec’s female form that celebrates life with its brilliant blue.
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