Company, Place
Company, Place
Lessons from the garden
Research, Ongoing
An ongoing practice of travelling around and researching into the gardens and green spaces. Many of our partners are keen to commission high-impact projects that bring transformational life and colour to large spaces, whilst simultaneously being deeply concerned about waste and pollution. We are currently on the journey to receiving our Level 2 Forest Gardening Award and hope this work can help inform future ideas and projects.
Part 1 of 3 - Landscape as art (Japan)
Through highly considered selection and placement of materials; specimen trees, stone arrangements, moss and grasses, gardens in Japan appear more painted than planted. They are especially beautiful in situations where the boundaries between a cultivated and wild space are blended, garden dissolving into endless forest. A 3D artwork that is better than any immersive video experience.
The human touch in the hard landscaping is a clear reminder that brown, grey and black are the hardest working colours in the palette; they are foundational, simultaneously grounding and lifting every other colour as seasons change. In public realm commissioning there is of course a desire for bold colour, but colour chosen for brightness without meaning or context feels empty. Especially when you consider that this desire is often only met by deploying materials made from petrochemicals and other poisons.
On reflection, the most striking part of our 2023 Poplar project, where the landscape was literally painted with materials from that same landscape, was just how unbelievable those colours looked once put back into the space: responsive, warm and restful to the eye. A similar thing happened in the Mother Goddess Garden; the hemp and earth installations made the pigments in the surrounding plants sing, guests stayed in that space for hours.
Over at Begbroke, we delivered a series of workshops recording the landscape at the Science Wonder summer event. The outcomes are now informing what we can and should put back into the landscape, a helpful way to review and edit the interventions that will be realised in the new year.
Ultimately the most important part (to us) about landscapes as artworks or art materials is that they offer an opportunity to deliver beautiful projects of scale, where there is a real potential to have oversight and visibility of the end-to-end production process. There are lots of great people working in this way, but it’s so striking how much more of this we need in the UK.
Part 2 of 3: Structures of care (Japan)
Blossom and autumnal leaves are of course the major seasonal thrills of the garden, but the winter tree protection and supports are also a total delight. Hemp ropes are installed to counterbalance the weight of snow on the branches 'Yuki-tsuri' and rice straw belts wrapped around trees to protect them against pests 'Komo-maki', although the latter is now understood to not be particularly effective, they do make for the most magical of winter decorations. There is something deeply satisfying about these fundamental materials being artfully deployed to ensure more spring blossom, autumn leaves and pine cones for future generations.
On our mini regenerative farming residency with Green School Fujino, we learnt about the town's local resources, agricultural practices, rich cultural heritage and work towards self-sufficiency. Two systems were particularly striking, firstly the Yorozu, a local currency implemented to increase knowledge exchange, skill-sharing and mutual support in the village. A barter system for goods and services, recorded down in a credit book, where being in deficit is actively encouraged. In fact, the most in-debt person is town royalty, highly celebrated for uncovering more local talent than anyone else.
The second system, HELIO COMPASS, is a interplanetary collaboration devise; a calendar and map based on the idea of biomimicry. The yuzu farm we stayed on used this to visualise, sequence, spatially design, trace, produce and manage their agricultural products. A stunning way to understand our place in the universe and how we can best align with the stars.
Perhaps all are quite disparate on a surface level, but we do feel there is a common theme; they are deeply supportive complex structures, where care and collaboration are both highly visible and central to their success.
On reflection, we've certainly noticed these structures of care at work elsewhere this year.
Material Cultures' Make Workshops, a structure in which the sharing of vital knowledge will ultimately decrease the individual risk one assumes when specifying materials that can be safely returned to earth, helping many businesses beyond their own transition to a low-carbon construction economy.
The People's Pavilion by Bruno De Marco, Tomi Balogun, Zhané Philips, Beyond The Box, Scale Rule, Re-Fabricate, Saqqra and Team Cultural Maze. Many hands made an exemplarily cross-career level public realm project and programme of events.
The Colèchi collective, who have formed a network of caring humans within the fashion and textile space - thoughtful and deeply compelling, they are a beacon of light in an otherwise pretty bleak landscape.
We have to mention the team in Thamesmead that we are so fortunate to be a part of, a group of people who signed up for a project with no pre-existing roadmap, collectively they have made the journey feel safe and secure. Lots of learnings, reveal themselves along the way.
It's clear that on any level acts of care and support are beautiful. Going forward we are interested in ways to reposition that work, so often unseen, underfunded and invisible at the end. How can we make the process of care and maintenance more accessible, reproducible and part of the ongoing programming of exciting activity. Ensuring that the structures of care can be seen long after the careful project teams are gone.
Part 3 of 3: Love for the landworkers
Both in the UK and Japan, we have spent a lot of time in gardens, fields, woods and farms this year. One thing is abundantly clear, from people to pollinators, we are nothing without our landworkers. We must support and protect those who keep our soil healthy and full of carbon.
More imagery and articles on are.na/company-place
Company
Lola Lely, Ceres, Alisa Ruzavina, Hayley Caine, Poplar Harca, Ecoworld, Donna Walker, Wax Atelier, KILOMET 109, Blue H’mong craftswomen of Pa Co village, British Council, Centre 151, Lyson Marchessault, Nice Projects, Store Projects, Hawkins/Brown, Oxford University Development, Green School Fujino, Material Cultures, Bruno De Marco, Tomi Balogun, Zhané Philips, Beyond The Box, Scale Rule, Re-Fabricate, Saqqra, Team Cultural Maze, Colèchi, Jasleen Kaur, Shalini Panchal, Comfort Adeneye, Gonzalo Fuentes, Qozeem Lawal, Shalini Panchal, Whitney Manassian, Yinka Danmole, Joseph Gray, Peabody Group, Shane Waltner, Ruby Taylor, Sitopia, Charlotte Molesworth and Willowbrook Farm.
Place
Japan - U.K
Photography
Company, Place & Melanie Issaka
