richard wedekind

Tor, 2011
Corten Steel
1500 x 1600 x 2300mm
Price on request

Richard Wedekind’s Tor, a gigantic, curvilinear corten steel piece, looks as if it is a boulder that has rolled down the hill face and settled; a landform common in granite country. Here the rock is defined by multiple layers. Moving around the work, looking from either The Glass House or standing on the path beneath it, the boulder takes different shapes, sliced in perfectly measured succession. Each individual piece is made up of a rounded organic form, and when placed side by side these define the distinctive shape of a head. It is intended that we view the sculpture from a distance, manipulating our perspective until the work is looming over us; the figure becomes the landscape and the landscape becomes the figure.

Wedekind’s sculpture often plays with the figurative and variances of scale. Perspective offers us the opportunity to visualise ‘man in the landscape’, the pre-eminence of mankind in this space. The sectional layering of shapes and connection between the human form and the landforms that surround us, makes reference to his first career as an exploration geologist. The work’s particular materiality is integral; corten steel will rust and weather over time, showing age, just as the human body does. In visualising such a profound human connection to the land we live in, Wedekind’s artworks also speak of a deep consciousness of the weathering of earth, an artist invested in our changing landscape and fragile climate. Tor is a crucial conversation between man and earth.