Peter Burke

Description

Burke's formal response when asked to submit a proposal for a site at Goodwood was to attempt to work in sympathy with the site with a horizontal work composed of a number of human scale verticals that would follow the undulations of the land, rather than to try and impose a large vertical presence in competition with the woodland.

The artist was initially trained as an engineer designing systems and tools for manufacturing and had the long-standing idea of developing a mass production process that could include an element of chance.

A process evolved using a production press in an Aerospace Factory that could take crushed reclaimed copper domestic water tanks and produce an infinite number of variations from a single mould. Burke had for some time been involved with the dynamics of recycled materials and had carried out an artist's residency in a metal reclamation yard, and was interested in the idea of short circuiting the recycling process by manufacturing with secondary raw materials.

The resulting 40 figures have a raw physicality which demonstrate their means of construction, and have been arranged to be read collectively emerging from the woodland. The sculpture associates itself with issues to do with Society's relationship with standardisation and mass production. It also addresses Man's relationship with nature and natural resources and aspects of our collective behaviour.