bev goodwin

Bush Cloak, 2015
Powder-coated aluminium wire
1500mm
Price on request

Bev Goodwin's psychic automatistic wire work creates a three dimensional line drawing suspended in mid-air, cutting through space and mirroring the natural forms of the forest. Deeply concerned with site-specificity, Goodwin’s work is planned and built around the environment in which it is intended for - be it lakes, forests, or the wild beaches of the West Coast.

Considering herself a multi-media practitioner, Goodwin finds great enjoyment in recycling low-tech materials, be it wire, plastics, wood or metal sheeting. Bush Cloak uses hand wound powder coated recycled aluminium and number 8 wire to create a convoluted circular form, suspended above the sculpture trail by fine stainless steel cables. It is a work as intricate as the cobwebs strung throughout the forest, there for the first trail-walker to venture through. Goodwin’s sculpture speaks of detail and dynamism - a complicated and busy sculpture with significant visual allure. Its suspension above the trail feels as if we are looking at an artificial spider web.

This artificiality is integral to Goodwin’s oeuvre, an exploration into the crossover between the sculpture’s natural surroundings and the harsh materiality of the recycled wire and steel. Goodwin muses: “While using unusual and recycled materials that mimic nature, I am asking the question: how fine is the line between the natural and the artificial? I hope to extend the imagination and possibilities in new found solutions”. Deeply concerned with environmentalism and the effects of mass consumerism, her recycled materials are integral to her artistic process, a comment on our collective actions on a fragile ecosystem - as fragile and intricate as Bush Cloak appears, floating slightly, in the native forest.