CURATED BY ARTIST REBEKAH DEAN,
in partnership with Stephens House & Gardens.
Funded by Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant.
Supported by Sacred Gin and Tree Matters.
01 – 09 September.
During garden opening hours.
Trail closes 1pm Monday September 9th.
Stephens House & Garden
17 East End Road
Finchley
N3 3QE.
One of the aims of a sculpture trail is for viewers to walk a considered distance in-between the artworks. Unlike a gallery space, which presents a confined interior setting, and shorter walking distances between the artworks, the sculpture trail offers the viewer the experience of walking outdoors, and being in the open air, in many ways, sculpture trails perform elements of ‘wellbeing’. Equipped with a map and the opportunity to connect with nature, the sculpture trail entices the viewer to wander the landscape from one sculpture to the next, whilst remaining actively on the move.
Curated by the artist Rebekah Dean, in partnership with Stephens House & Gardens, the Sculpture Trail, The Sky is Moving Sideways, now enters its third year, in what appears to be becoming a biennial event. The Trail, invites 12 national and international women artists to explore notions on transient and nomadic states, through the presentation of ephemeral and impermanent artworks. The selected group of artists have been invited to create sculptures and installations that challenge the elements and the integrity of their materials, within the dynamic landscape of Stephens House & Gardens.
The title The Sky is Moving Sideways takes its name from the artistic practice of walking. Pre-pandemic, there was already a rich and divergent history of Artists who used the activity of walking as a method for sustaining their creative practice. To walk in the landscape, is to walk with the landscape, we carry it both externally and internally, one is not just passing through it. To that end my thinking is that the sky is always moving sideways.
With a walk time of 15 minutes at a steady pace, or 20, at a more convivial gait, the trail invites local North London audiences and beyond, to revel in this unique location that is Stephens House & Gardens, and observe its intimacy, through the eyes of these 12 women artists:
LAURA MORETON-GRIFFITHS
JANE WOOLATT
B.A. ADEYEMO
BLANDINE MARTIN
MANDY PROWSE
JUSTINE HOUNAM
SARAH PAGER
JULIA MALLABY
NAHELLI CHAVOYA
BERG DUO
Follow the trail, FREE colour map available in the arch to the garden’s entrance, or download it from the website.
FREE Sculpture Workshop – Wednesday, September 4th, 10.30 am – 4.30 pm
FREE Curator’s Fun Tour – Saturday, September 7th, 2.00 pm – 3.00 pm, with live performance by dance artist, Nahelli Chavoya
Booking essential.
See website for more details: www.stephenshouseandgardens.
Showing three connected bodies of work, Mary’s Monster & Friends features, at The Cascade, No. 8 on the map. Black and white hand-painted free-standing drawings as objects collage together visual and sociopolitical narratives of matriarchs, monsters, and man-made war: A Hyena in Petticoats (2014) about eighteenth-century English writer, philosopher and proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, made in ink on gesso on ply; Brimstone Bureaucracy (2015) about the then overlooked and still ongoing conflict in Syria, also made in ink on gesso on ply; and Truth Lies Within (2017), about genetics, longevity and modified nature in the future, in oil on powder-coated laser-cut steel. Installed here at Stephens House & Gardens in 2024, the narratives intertwine in a sorrowful critique of the patriarchy. Brought up to date with a new performance The History is, performed in a wearable painting, playing musical sticks.
