A LITTLE bit of South American rainforest has been installed in a community wood in Aberdeen to encourage people to think about the environment.
Artist Stan Brooks has produced a sculpture from wood recycled from Shetland’s Sullum Voe oil terminal.
The wood, from a decommissioned operation, was thought to be of no use until it was rescued by Brooks, a graduating student from Gray’s School of Art.
His sculpture, called The Nest, has been constructed in Maryculter Woods where it is intended to be a new home for woodland creatures.
More than 130 children helped Brooks create nest and bug boxes to be installed in the sculpture to provide shelter and home to a range of wildlife.
“The whole project began while I was at the Sullom Voe oil terminal and discovered several tonnes of Greenheart Wood, which was destined to be buried underground and forgotten about,” said Brooks.
“Within the space of 24 hours, I had pitched The Nest idea to the site managers, who agreed to allow me to have the wood and then began a very long and tough process of removing the wood, and getting it to Aberdeen to begin work on the installation.
“With support from my tutors at Gray’s School of Art and many other people, the project really began to take shape and new elements of community engagement started to steer me in different angles.
“Originally destined for landfill, this timber now has new life, saving nature’s bounty from destruction for us all to enjoy in the wonderful setting of a community wood in Maryculter.”
Brooks’ environmental project is echoed in much of the work of the other graduating students which can be seen in this year’s MA degree show this week.
A total of 19 students are exhibiting work which reflects on society, technology and rapid changes in the world.
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“What we can see in this year’s show, is that the artists and designers are really wrestling with some of the bigger questions, about our relationship to the environment and the relationship of art and design with wider society,” said Jon Pengelly, programme leader for the masters in fine art.
Maya Medina, an international student from Bolivia, studied the MA in product design and has been working with Wood Recyclability Ltd on a range of products made from repurposed material.
“My masters’ project is related to things that I really care about and focuses on social responsibility and ecology,” she said.
“I have been working with Recyclability Ltd using unwanted materials, which would otherwise go to waste, to develop a new product range which will hopefully allow them to access new markets.”
One of the other graduating students is the winner of the BBC’s Great Pottery Throwdown, Matthew Wilcock, who is a ceramicist and lecturer at Gray’s School of Art.
His project has looked at how traditional handmade craft can integrate with new technologies.
“In an age where ground-breaking equipment is being developed, regular contemporary makers are able to access new tools which allows them to make what would otherwise be impossible,” he said.
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“Using computer-aided design, I am able to create designs that otherwise would remain limited to my imagination and restricted by material properties and other practical restrictions.”
Callum Kellie’s work explores the imbalance between the perception of the Scottish landscape and the reality.
“Through works of fiction and historical art we have this predefined image but the romantic landscape came about because it was altered through management of the land,” he said.
“After the last ice age the great Caledonian forest came up and Scotland had a similar environment to that of the Scandinavian countries in terms of tree cover, but by the 1700s and 1800s most of it was gone as the trees were felled to create open ground for farming and timber for fuel and construction.
“While our heather-covered hills have been that way for a while it’s not what it would have been like had it not been deforested but this has been going for so long we don’t necessarily notice the damage.”
Kellie, whose work is photographic and film-based, created a library of images, then, using gold leaf, started to highlight the parts that had been altered and damaged.
The gold leaf idea comes from a Japanese practice called Kintsugi where damaged ceramics are repaired with gold and the cracks are seen as part of the history of that object.
“I applied the idea to landscape by doing that in photographs to highlight what had happened instead of producing a pristine picture,” said Kellie.
The Gray’s School of Art MA Degree Show opened yesterday and is free to attend, with many of the artefacts and products for sale.
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