The Albury Wodonga Superfiction 1993
Collaboration Peter Hill and J.J. Voss (Photographer)
The Albury Wodonga Superfiction 1993
Collaboration Peter Hill and J.J. Voss (Photographer)
Alba, ‘Art and Science’ Double Issue, March 1989
Peter Hill: Over the last twenty years you have worked with a wide variety of materials from papier maché to cast work to living plants and trees. The one common thread in all these works has been growth – particularly relating to plants. Can you speak about the development behind this?
Sjoerd Buisman: When I decided to become an artist the most
important thing to me was the world of nature. The little townwhere
I grew up was very near the delta of the Rhine and the Meuse. The whole
area with its floods and growths influenced me. When I went to art school
those natural elements became the most important input to my
work.
PH: Did you train as a sculptor?
SB: I started by learning to paint but I soon realised
I had a love of materials. I
rebelled against the traditional art school training and decided to work on
my own as a sculptor. At that time I knew a number of artists whose work interested
me and I sensed what had to be done. I then went to Atelier’s 63 in Haarlem
which was more experimental and there I continued my ideas. I started
to use real plants,
garden cress and grass, living potatoes and oats.
PH: Was the next stage in your work the use of willow?
SB: Around 1970 the growing aspect of my work became more
important. I went in
to nature and tried to influence these processes. I started to grow willows
upside down and put willows horizontally just above the water level over a
stream. The results were documented through photography. Some of the
willows were brought in to the gallery and in a sense this paralleled displays
in natural history museums – the contriving of a fake environment with “objects” – albeit
living – taken out of context.
PH: Was it also important that with the works placed in nature that during certain seasons they would disappear and later reappear as interventions?
SB: I did not consider those results in advance. But
when things vanished
within their natural surroundings I was pleased and used this aspect later
until works had the aspect that they had been there for hundreds of years.
PH: You created palisades and fortresses in sculpture
parks such as the
Kroller Muller, some, again, from living willow. This created a “room” or
area unreachable by park keepers and their lawn-mowers and insecticides. Rabbits
came to live in these spaces, wild flowers grew there and in turn they attracted
butterflies
and insects new to the area. Is this altering of the environment deliberate
and how do
ecologists view it?
SB: Primarily I am a sculptor and those aspects which
you mention are really
something “extra”. There is no environmental message in my
work. Of course I
have my own private concerns but I try to keep them separate from my sculpture. My
material may be drawn from nature but they are just parallels to bronze, plaster
and
so-called conventional materials.
PH: An obsession within an obsession has been the phyllotaxis,
of the celery
plant, which has been the inspiration for several sculptures and landworks
in
materials as diverse as peat, bronze, cement and steel. This has amounted
to a rigorous analytical study of the growth spiral of the celery plant and
the inverse of that shape
when pulled through 180 degrees. How did you come to this project?
SB: It really started in ’81 with material I collected in the late
seventies
when I was travelling in South America, the Middle East and Indonesia. The
structural ideas came from those travels. These structures are found
in cacti and palm trees
in addition to celery and are a good point of departure to argue the existence
of chaos
and order in nature, and in materials. Also, all the work which comes
from the phyllotaxis I see as a stamp, or marks, that I have planted around
the world.
PH: Like growths on the planet...
SB: Yes, that’s a nice way of putting it,
more natural than the duplication of
a proto-type. It was an idea that began in a house in Provence where
I lived on
a grant from the van Gogh Foundation, and was later picked up in Newcastle
where I was invited to work at the polytechnic and use their plaster and bronze
workshops.
This was a very important period for me.
PH: There are a number of artists with similar concerns
such as Andy Goldsworthy
and David Nash. Do you all feel part of a group or are you just friends
with similar concerns?
SB: Many aspects of work are common to us all, but
I don’t see us as a group.
Certainly, we have worked together. Goldsworthy has a relationship with
Nash
because he was once a student of Nash. I have a relationship with Nash
because at
one time we were working with similar concerns – particularly with the
growing
sculptures that we used to make. In time the attitude of museums and gallery
directors towards David and me changed and we were no longer looked on as eccentrics
working in the wilds. This recognition gave us the freedom to develop
our individual concerns and to push in new directions. Occasionally I will
return to a growing piece but it is no longer top of the bill for me. In recent
years I have been especially enthralled with the system behind the development
of vegetation. The numerical relationship which I discovered in these
developments are separated from their vegetable origin and applied in my sculptures.
The result is invariably a spiralling form. Another thing is that in the late
seventies my work existed mostly in photographs and as an artist I became bored
with this process. After a show at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford I was
mentioned in a review as a modern photographer. This was a very important sign
to me. I then wanted to get back to having more direct influence on the
work through drawing and through manipulating materials.
PH: What interested me the other evening was when we
were talking about your
recent free standing sculpture yo ace and the way space presses in on the work,
and that the base was weighted to allow it to stand freely...
SB: This is not a new element in my work. The
spiral pieces have also a lot to do
with spiral sculpture problems. Other works I like to relate to are the reclining
figures
of Henry Moore. There is an important “black hole” in these
works that describe shape and volume – sometimes open, sometimes closed.
It is important that my sculptures are more complex than they at first appear
and for this reason movement round them is important.
PH: Are you planning more trips abroad?
SB: Yes, I feel that I should get to somewhere that
is totally new to me, in
culture and landscape. Perhaps Australia. I need to get influences from hidden
sources – not just from landscape. I have been watching some very interesting
BBC documentaries on Australia, and the many geological/biological aspects
of that continent appeal to me and fascinate me.
