Mold 001

This artwork featured in In Ruins (2019). 

Stuart Whipps’ image references Las Pozas – a garden created by the eccentric English poet Edward James in a subtropical rainforest in the mountains of Mexico, where towering concrete forms now stand in an evolving state of decay and ruination.

From 1947, Edward James – an early patron of the Surrealists – populated his garden jungle with a whole series of whimsical, open-ended follies, porticoes and towers. He used concrete to create the surreal structures his mind envisaged. James always planned for the structures to slowly fade into the rainforest, the intention being that someday an archaeologist would find Las Pozas and be utterly perplexed.

The displayed image is one of the wooden molds used by James to cast sections of his concrete construction – the image visually reflects the concrete support structures present at Witley Court.

Birmingham based artist Stuart Whipps often makes work about things he doesn’t understand and doesn’t know how to do; this includes the restoration of a 1979 Mini with the assistance of former British Leyland workers.

Image: Stuart Whipps, Mold 001, installation view, In Ruins, Croft Castle, 2019. Image courtesy of Stefan Handy.

 

About the artist

Stuart Whipps

Stuart Whipps exhibited in In Ruins, Witley Court, 2019, and Landscape with Machines, Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron, 2015.

Image: Stuart Whipps, Mold 001, 2012. Digital Chromogenic Print on Dibond. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Stefan Handy.