Sweet Red

These outdoor artworks are made from planted and harvested materials, existing trees and the land itself. They are living out their natural lives in the landscape that has provided their initial inspiration, inviting physical engagement and provoking responses from playfulness to contemplation. They will change as they grow, or remain until the materials rot naturally.

Crossover Outdoors examines the work of artists who make links with basketry, textiles, and fibre sculpture and land art. Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery selected the artists and developed the works in partnership with Ickworth House Park and Gardens and St Edmundsbury Borough Council.

The artists offer us an insight into their ideas and concerns for the environment, as well as providing some understanding of the process involved in making these ambitious works of art.

Crossover Outdoors is an exciting extension of a national touring exhibition called Crossover: the interface between basketry and sculpture launched at Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery (May/June 2001).

A catalogue for Crossover and Maker Profile videos of the gallery artists are available from Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery.

Since graduating from the sculpture department of the Royal College of Art, London, Elpida has pursued an increasingly ambitious series of personal projects, which respond to the environment, challenge expectations, and question notions of man's control and structuring of the world. For Sweet Red, the trunk of a Canadian Redwood - felled after being struck by lightening - was sawn into slices and suspended with steel wires within a copse of cedars. Weighing over 500kg each, the hanging slices evoke feelings of apprehension and awe, heightened by the dramatic light inside the space.

"The forest is a secret place, its floor is a membrane that separates the underground where the tree's root structure echoes the configuration of its branches - the tips of which brush that other membrane, the sky."

Sweet Red is found inside a copse between the car park and the astro-turf sports-field at Nowton Park.

Other commissioning artist includes Tim Johnson, Chris Drury, Steve Pickup and Jim Buchanan. http://www.burystedmundsartgallery.org