Jim Roseveare’s handmade bricks as part of Site 102222

James Roseveare in the Wood — Site number: 102222

James Roseveare is in the woods where he is possibly happiest, amongst the trees he loves. As a tree surgeon his work is to sculpt and shape trees to keep them healthy, so it is completely logical that he was always going to work as an artist with and within the natural world. HOT’s Lauris Morgan-Griffiths was delighted to find James Roseveare’s new sculptures in a wooded glade in Springfield Wood near Robertsbridge  as part of blackShed’s exhibition Site number: 102222.

As I approach the clearing I wonder what local walkers would have thought of these raw pillars of bricks if they tripped across them in the clearing. Would they have questioned them as either a potential building project or ancient ruins?

Roseveare’s art has always seemed to be concerned with the perpetual changing world; nothing is static or forever. This work embraces that, moulding the locally sourced clay, the debris — stones, leaves, corn from the woods; in esssence, creating the local, working, ancient landscape into monumental sculptures and hand-made bricks.

There are two parts to the exhibiton, one in the formal gallery and part in a clearing in the adjacent woods. The exhibition grew out of a workshop that began in February 2022. Kenton Lowe of The blackShed Gallery brought together a mixed group of people with artists, potter Martin Brockman and sculptor Jim Roseveare, to demonstrate traditional woodland skills; simple tool making, tree identification and forestry care, as well as making organic pigments from natural materials and digging woodland clay, which were then fired using Brockman’s rudimentarily constructed, Heath Robinson-esque kilns.

Jim Roseveare Site102222 at the blackShed Gallery

From that workshop Jim Roseveare became the gallery’s artist-in-residence. With no preconceived idea of an end result, Roseveare started to ‘play’ in the woods with the clay that he had also learned about from Brockman in their workshop .

Whether you start the exhibition from inside the blackShed or in the woodland, both venues quite take your breath away. The Gallery is very dark with a few dramatic spotlights illuminating two monumental sculptures made from unfired, woodland clay. They look like giant slabs, but to me they were reminiscent of gravestones; a portent of global warning but also life’s transitory nature, a sign of nothing is here for ever.

By its size it feels indestructable but it is made of earth, clay, sand and the stuff from the woodland floor, so is already showing signs of cracking and decay while at the same time there are signs of life. Look closely and you can see seeds sprouting that have implanted themselves in the making, plus signs of imprints of life.

In the nearby woodland site the sculpture is pillars made from hand-hewn bricks. Roseveare was helped by volunteers: some were upset when they weren’t making perfect bricks, but he encouraged them to let them be what they were; he liked the basic nature of them with their cracks and holes. All the better for housing wildlife.

James Roseveare Site102222

Roseveare’s work marks the passage of time and embraces the transitory nature of  life. His pillar of bricks is already beginning to break down, ashes to ashes, returning to the woodland floor whence it came.  At the same time it is a celebration of life as spiders, insects and other creatures are moving into the structure. When I was visiting, there were even possible traces of animals, curious squirrels having left a sweet chestnut shell on top of one of the pillars.

Jim Roseveare is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors. He has exhibited extensively in London, nationally and internationally over the last twenty years.  However, he is still very much a tree surgeon, partly for financial reasons but also because it informs his art. Much of it is about impermanence — nature constantly changing and transforming itself. That also applies to tree surgery, to felling a tree, to judicious and aesthetic pruning.

Art galleries are to be found in many places – old warehouses, churches and purpose-built galleries – but exhibitions sited in the landscape are still unusual. There are several outdoor sculpture parks, whereas some artists use nature itself to create magical, temporary structures in the wild: David Nash’s Ash Dome in Wales , Andrew Goldsworthy working in situ with ice, branches, flowers, James Turrell capturing and transforming the experience of natural light, and Richard Long with his walks through landscapes, committing them to poetic texts.

James Rosaveare is in good company.

Site number: 102222 is on at the blackShed Gallery Russet Farm, Redlands Lane, Robertsbridge TN32 5NG until 19 November 2022. Open Tuesday to Friday 10am – 4pm, Saturday 10am – 4.30pm.

Watch James Roseveare talking about his project here. Read a previous HOT article here.

Also in: Visual Arts