Slow art, long legacy

Recent visitors to a beautiful area of ancient woodland in North Yorkshire may have been surprised to find a giant talking cactus ‘growing’ within the Christmas tree plantation, but hopefully it may have slowed them down in their tracks and inspired them to consider the potential effects of climate change on the world around us. This was one of the intentions when Chrysalis Arts, a public art company, came up with the idea of ‘The Slow Art Trail’, a large-scale, environmental, public art collaboration involving a team of professional artists. But the project also had another equally important aim – which was to explore the concept and practicalities of producing sustainable art.

Rick Faulkner, from Chrysalis Arts, describes The Slow Art Trail as a research exercise to help work out how our environmental policy can be integrated into public art commissions: “One aim of the process of developing an environmental art trail has been to help us to establish sustainable art criteria for assessing the benefits and impact of future public art projects. It is now very much part of our ethos to ensure that the commissions we deliver not only have strong artistic integrity but are also created with minimal environmental impact.

The Slow Art Trail, which enabled visitors to experience the landscape and contemplate the artworks at a slow and leisurely pace, was situated within the Bolton Abbey Estate, near Skipton, in the North Yorkshire Dales. The Trail consisted of a series of environmental outdoor installations commissioned from leading public artists, complemented by poetry written by David Morley about the wood and surrounding area. Work ranged from pieces that tempted visitors to sit and contemplate their surroundings to those which challenged perceptions about contemporary art-making in a traditional rural landscape. The art made comments on these changes, and effects. From a visitor point of view, the Trail highlighted current unsustainable trends, such as resource scarcity, pollution and climate change, and the effects of these trends on places, landscape, agriculture, and human perceptions; but one of its lasting legacies will be a set of guidelines that Chrysalis is developing based on the experiences of gained.
Sustaining quality
By developing its project, Chrysalis Arts was able to have more control over the approach and implementation of the Slow Art Trail than is usual with commissioned public art. With support from Gaia Research, Chrysalis produced an initial brief for artists, which requested that installations follow the guidelines of sustainability, low embodied energy, and recycled and recyclable materials. This included paying attention to sourcing of materials, avoidance of pollution, waste and toxicity avoidance, and bio-diversity, though in the selection process and implementation of the project, equal weight was also given to the artistic integrity and quality of the work.
Chrysalis encouraged a team approach and as a result the range of artworks on the Slow Art Trail complemented each other: the six artists selected to develop installations worked with diverse materials and methods, but were united by their strong empathy for working sustainably. They included Andy Plant, who created a giant recycled copper ‘Talking Cactus’; Laura Ellen Bacon, whose woven, site-specific sculptures in coppiced willow carry a theme of organic growth and nesting; and Steve Gumbley, who created ‘From Horse Power to Hydrogen Power’ a shadowgraph machine exploring energy sources such as nuclear, chimneys and cooling towers, which he describes as a “mechanical meditation on sources of power.”
Green future
The Slow Art Trail itself has just ended, but the future is green! Chrysalis Arts is currently evaluating the project, and looking at the issues that have emerged during the process, including the making, transporting and installation of works, as well as the decommissioning process. The findings will not only inform public art projects that it undertakes in the future – ranging from urban regeneration schemes to those with a particular focus on climate change – but will also be available for other arts professionals. Rick Faulkner concludes, “For the past 12 months we have been working, not only to develop our environmental policy, but also to identify realistic and achievable ways of putting this into practice. This includes producing our own set of guidelines, which will be launched at a seminar we are planning to hold in 2009. These will further explore sustainability issues for both artists and commissioners, and we plan to incorporate this work into our future public art training.”
Chrysalis Arts is a public art company with sustainability at its very heart. After over 20 years in business, the company is still continuing to innovate and, whereas some may use this knowledge for their own competitive advantage, they want to share it with us all.