The enclosure...

Sumi on RSW paper - These are words from Marc Peter Keane's book on Japanese gardening 'The Art of Setting Stones' (Stone Bridge Press 2002), he kindly allowed me to use them as part of the material for my exhibition 'Practising Contentment' at The Crafts Study Centre. "Contradictory as this may seem, the act of separation is also a means of association. Like the backyard gardens of Korean country estates that simply wall in a section of a grassy mountain and do no more, the wall brings a section of the wild into the sphere of a human order and in doing so also allows those who reside within, in reverse, a means to approach the wild. The enclosure transcends it role as separator, becoming a coupling instead. In closing the circle - closing the gate, building the wall - we shut out the wild with the intent of protecting ourselves but in dong so we create a place in which we can be at one with our environment: a garden. At home in the garden, we find that through the garden we are joined to the larger natural world." pp.58-59.

21 3/4" x 30" | 517 mm x 765 mm