Renewal
by Anna Berry
I was commissioned by Urban Wilderness to create a temporary installation for the Longton.
I was struck by the omnipresence of buddleia in so many of the heritage buildings. It's indomitable and insists on growing in the most difficult of places, like a symbol of hope for renewal even from seemingly impossible circumstances. It's also very beautiful.
However, it's complex: it's a pest, and there's inevitably a battle between those trying to preserve the heritage buildings and the buddleia that keeps trying to reclaim it for nature. I think that's an interesting metaphor for Stoke's relationship with its own industrial heritage. Trying to find that line between conservation and pride in the past, and a vision for the future.
I work with cones as part of my sculptural vocabulary. The tyvek looks like paper, and conveys a sense of fragility, and the white colour is a nod to pre-glazed porcelain. The street architecture fuses with the organic piece, as the installation crawls up the lamp post, to bounce above the heads of the people walking by. There is something joyful, pleasing, and absurd in it. Like the buddleia, the piece is claiming the architecture, and together becoming something new.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Anna Berry is an artist. She is based in Milton Keyes and her portfolio contains installations which respond to decision making about public space in Milton Keynes. Urban Wilderness CIC invited Anna to create work for Longton because we like what she has to say about public spaces, and we like public sculptures that come and are gone again, like this one.
Anna says of her work:
“I can’t tell you how much I hate talking about my art. I dread conversations with nominally interested parties in which I regurgitate the contents of some indigestible artist’s statement all over the unwitting victim who was just trying to make small talk. I’ve read the advice countless times – keep your statement simple, direct, accessible. It’s awful.
I make art almost precisely because the last thing I’m able to do, is pin words on this. And now they want me to write about it: if it wasn’t so tragic, the irony would be hilarious.”
Learn more about Anna’s work here to contact or commission her:
This piece was supported by Arts Council England and commissioned by Urban Wilderness CIC for the Moony Club.
