Hand Earth Gesture Return, 2022
Coventry Canal Basin
Pangaea Sculptors’ Centre
The development of Hand Earth Gesture Return publicly manifested as chapters across different media (film, photography, sculpture, performance, installation, events) over the course of a year. Through this approach we shared the development and evolution, across time and space, of this ambitious, world-class public art project; from an idea forming through local, national and international collaboration and responding to stimuli. It exposed what usually goes on behind the scenes and in artists’ studios as the artwork was made in public over time. The public could join making workshops and performances, visit temporary installations, follow online tutorials and follow the story of transformation online.
This fifth chapter saw the last year’s growing, sourcing and creation activity brought together in this site-specific public art installation, designed for Coventry Canal Basin and inspired by the surrounding people, place and context. For the duration of this installation, the Canal Basin and all objects, people, activities, were understood as a giant evolving sculptural composition. The Canal Basin became a stage created by scaffold straw drying racks, clay-smeared billboard posters, raw construction materials, paraphernalia and sculptural forms in stages of evolution. The act of creation itself was the art: Artists and public intertwining; hands and feet moving to a shared rhythm; bodies and surfaces coated with clay; the sounds of production; the beat of drums connecting us back to the earth.
More information can be found in the links below.
https://www.pangaeasculptorscentre.com/gesture/
https://www.pangaeasculptorscentre.com/hand-earth-gesture-return-3/