Bethan Huws
A Marriage in the King's Forest, 2009

A Marriage in the King's Forest was screened deep within King's Wood on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th September.

In this film event the formal and informal rituals of a contemporary wedding reception are transposed from Margate's crumbling, suberranean Winter Gardens into the forest space. The work itself becoming a special event, bringing people together, and mirroring the social function of the wedding reception.

2 text works can also be seen until 6th December in the Nayland Rock Shelter and Seafront Shelter overlooking Margate Bay.

A Marriage in the King's Forest is commissioned jointly by SVA and Turner Contemporary.

Edward Chell
Carboretum: From Acer to Quercus, 2009

Carboretum, located in the main King's Wood car park, playfully confuses methods for the classification of tree species with techniques for demarcating car parking spaces. The result celebrates the car park as a theshold between two very different experiences of the English landscape, the one, as seen through a car windscreen and the other, immersed in a multi-sensory environment.

Carboretum is a temporary intervention, in association with Stour Valley Arts

For more information visit www.edwardchell.com

London Fieldworks
Super Kingdom, 2008

++ Super Kingdom is shortlisted for the Architects Journal (AJ) Rambøll WhitbyBird Small Project Award 2009 ++

Super Kingdom is a development of new animal habitats within King's Wood. These luxury homes are modelled on the imperious palaces of Stalin, Ceauscescu and Mussolini and offer nesting and over-winter sites to native and migrant species.

A digital animation will be made over the winter hibernation period using these structures as film set. This work will be launched in spring 2009.

For more information visit www.londonfieldworks.com

To download a map showing the location of this work as well as other sculptures within King's Wood click here for a PDF (1.5MB)

To find the sculptures please follow the wide ride past Rosie Leventon's Ring, Chris Drury's Coppice Cloud Chamber and Jem Finer's Score for a Hole in the Ground (nos 4, 5 and 12 on the map) to the junction (opposite the pond). Super Kingdom can be found a few yards up the track to the left set back in the trees on the right hand side.

Matthew King
King's Wood Symphony, 2007
King's Wood Symphony was written by Matthew King.
Electronic Score by Nye Parry.
With further contributions from Mike Roberts and students from Guildhall School of Music & Drama plus students from local schools.

The wood was used as inspiration, performance space and instrument in this piece which animated a dialogue between the ancient woodland space and the contempoary urban environment. The work included horns, percussion and digitally manipulated sounds of the forest and was presented first as a grand symphony, with musicians playing and moving through a mile and a half of the forest, and secondly as two pieces of chamber music at Wigmore Hall, London.

A new documentary film of this event will be posted here soon.

Christopher Jones
Forest Stars, 2007
2000 lights illuminate the forest floor within King's Wood creating a magical carpet of red that only becomes visible as dusk falls. Each LED is powered by a battery of decomposing pine needles and highlights the latent energies that exist within this place. These organic batteries were sufficient to power the lights for 5 nights before their glow faded.

Jem Finer
Score for a Hole in the Ground, 2006 & ongoing
Jem Finer the first recipient of the prestigious PRS New Music Award has realised his proposal Score for a Hole in the Ground at King's Wood. It is a post-digital work that relies purely on gravity and water to generate music.

Inspired by suikinkutsu, water chimes found in temple gardens of Japan, Score for a Hole in the Ground uses tuned percussive instruments, played by falling water, to create music. Finer describes his piece as "both music and an integrated part of the landscape and the forces that operate on it and in it".

Please be aware that the sound element of this piece is extremely subtle. It requires time to allow you to tune your ear to the level of sound and is affected by weather and ambient noise.

A book documenting the background, installation and first year of Score for a Hole in the Ground is now available. Click to order a copy from Cornerhouse.

A film work is also in progress.

More information and audio recordings of Score for a Hole in the Ground and Longplayer can be found at www.scoreforaholeintheground.org and www.longplayer.org

To find this piece and its location in the forest please see the map:

Map of SVA in King's Wood - PDF version (302k)
Map of SVA in King's Wood - JPG version (287k)

Jacques Nimki
Woodlock, 2005/06
Jacques Nimki worked in King’s Wood researching plant life on the floor of the forest. The results of this research informed an installation for Fabrica in Brighton, in the summer of 2006, with whom we collaborated on this project.

Peter Fillingham
The Last Eleven Years, 2004/5
Peter Fillingham has designed a railing to lead you through the forest, but it doesn’t lead anywhere in particular and is at times quite hard to follow. As a fence it keeps nothing in or out but disappears into the trees its end unseen. Made by a local fencer in softwood it sits lightly in its forest surroundings drawing a line through the forest and raising the question, Is it an artwork or is it a Forestry construction? A piece for your imagination to play with.

Emily Richardson
Aspect, 2003/04
Aspect is a response to the night and early morning light in King’s Wood through the seasons. A year of the forest condensed into nine minutes. This 16mm film uses time-lapse photography and has a sound track by Benedict Drew, which acts as a parallel pulse to the film. Aspect was screened in the forest in September 2004 and it has subsequently been shown in other venues, such as the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and festivals all over the world. The book Time Frames, published by SVA, places Aspect in the context of Emily Richardson’stwo other time-lapse films and includes a CD of the soundtracks of all three films by Benedict Drew.

More information on www.emilyrichardson.org.uk

Edwina fitzPatrick
Arboreal Laboratory, 2002/04
During her residency in 2002-3, Edwina fitzPatrick used the forest as her arboreal laboratory. She created a range of King’s Wood perfumes with perfumers from Quest International plc, Ashford. The artist also worked with composer Matthew King to create music inspired by birdsong in the forest. The exhibition was at the Herbert Read Gallery, Kent Institute of Art and Design, Canterbury in October 2004 and the book, Arboreal Laboratory published by SVA, was launched to coincide with the exhibition.

More information is on www.edwinafitzpatrick.co.uk

Rosie Leventon
B52, 2003
Working with Forest Enterprise, Rosie Leventon has cleared sweet chestnut trees to carve out a space in the forest which is twice that of a B52 bomber. The artist wanted to subvert this aircraft’s aggressive power into something positive. Abundant light now falls on the forest floor, bringing new life, regeneration and biodiversity. It can also be seen as future archaeology.

More information at www.rosieleventon.com

Rosie Leventon
Ring, 2003
Rosie Leventon has created an earthwork inspired by the pre-historic barrows, or ancient burial mounds, which are found in King’s Wood and nearby. A circular bank with a concave centre is being held together by cleaved coppiced chestnut straps. By the time this wood has rotted away, the bank will have settled and become established.

More information at www.rosieleventon.com

Stephen Turner
Tree Rings, 2001-2002
Stephen Turner created art in which the forest played an active part. Large circular canvases were laid under the canopies of trees and over weeks or months they accumulated marks resulting from processes of growth and decay. Turner also drew with inks he made from leaves, barks, pine cones and berries. An exhibition of these works took place at the Metropole Gallery, Folkstone in 2003 together with an accompanying catalogue.

Based upon this period of practical research futher works were made at Tweede Natuur, Belgium and the Natural History Museum, London.

A new exhibition exploring this ongoing area of Stephen's practice will take place at Fermywoods, Northamptonshire 11th September - 2nd November 2008. For more information see www.fermynwoods.co.uk

Tessa Farmer
Touch Wood, 2001
Tessa Farmer made over a hundred tiny fairies and goblins out of twigs, leaves, seeds and flowers. These creatures inhabited the forest for several weeks and were seen emerging from their cocoons, flying from branch to branch and scrambling over logs. A very few can be seen to this day. Tessa Farmer’s tiny sculptures were also exhibited at Tweede Natuur, near Antwerp, Belgium.

More information at the New Contemporaries site, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (PDF document); Clapham Art Gallery site; 24 Hour Museum site.

Judy Gordon & David Barnett
Figments, 2001
Performing arts specialist Judy Gordon and digital artist David Barnett worked with actors to create extraordinary scenarios using digital collages of the forest and harsh urban environments. They also recorded the voices of a forester and people who live nearby. Their resulting CD is a highly charged and surreal exploration of city-dwellers’ reactions to the forest.

Lukasz Skapski
Via Lucem Continens, 2000
Polish artist Lukasz Skapski’s Via Lucem Continens (Avenue Containing Light) is a 140-metre avenue of 200 yew trees planted by local people. The artwork is a device for viewing the setting sun: it framed the sunset on midsummer’s day 2000 and will act as a battery of energy over the next millennium - during which time the yew trees will slowly mature.

Each year on Midsummer Day (subject to weather) a picnic is hosted within the avenue of yew trees. All are invited to join us as we witness the setting of the sun in this unique space. Please see the Diary page foir futher information.

More information on the Via Lucem Continens microsite.
http://lukaskapski.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lukasz-skapski/
http://lukasz-skapski.bloog.pl/

Susan Derges
Kingswood,1999/2000
The photographer Susan Derges was artist in residence in King’s Wood during the four seasons of one year. Using a large pinhole camera deep in the forest, she made images of light filtering through the trees; she also created luminous photograms of fungi and bluebells. An evolving exhibition of these works took place across a full year at St Mary's Church, Ashford in 2000 - 2001, followed by an exhibition at Whitstable Museum and Art Gallery in 2003. The artist's book Kingswood is also available, published by Stour Valley Arts and Photoworks.

Hamish Fulton
Walking Through, 1999
Hamish Fulton’s book Walking Through resulted from the artist’s walks through King’s Wood and the Stour Valley. It was produced as a signed, limited edition and quickly sold out. The commission celebrated the experience of walking through the forest, looking, listening and thinking - passing through without leaving a trace.

Giuliano Mauri
Imprints, 1999
Giuliano Mauri bent and manipulated chestnut poles harvested in King’s Wood, criss-crossing them around live chestnut trees. The structures enfold the trees, leaving them space to grow and entwine with the woven wood, and to become part of the sculpture.

This work is no longer visible in the forest (2008).

Chris Drury
Coppice Cloud Chamber, 1998
Coppice Cloud Chamber is a camera obscura, a simple optical device that brings the outside in. This igloo-like structure, made from many hundreds of chestnut logs, houses a delicate projected image of the sky and treetops above. The space is contemplative and begs you to sit quietly for a few moments. As you step outside, the surrounding landscape seems more luminous, more clearly defined.

More information is on www.chrisdrury.co.uk

Dominique Bailly
Circle, Line, Cone, 1996
The formal geometric design of Dominique Bailly’s sculpture has gradually become mossy and worn. It is beginning to meld back into the landscape, leaving a kind of archaeological trace.
This work has now been reclaimed by the forest.

(See also Richard Harris, sculpture no.4)

Andy Frost
Play Sculpture and Picnic Furniture, 1995
Working with the foresters, Andy Frost carved and coloured Douglas fir logs into the insects and animals he had observed in the forest. You can picnic on Frost’s grasshopper or beetle, and children can climb on his wasp, pig, caterpillar, snake, or his fox chasing rabbits.

Richard Harris
Untitled, 1994
Richard Harris searched hard to find the configuration of coppiced chestnuts that he wanted. He bent and tied their branches, using hedge-laying techniques to create a semicircular archway. The sculpture has slowly matured and Harris returns each winter to trim and tie the annual growth.

Richard Harris
Untitled, 1994
Richard Harris also chose to work with some saucer-shaped holes left by ancient flint mines. He used hundreds of pieces of wood and flint to define these given shapes. Two of the three sculptures he made have recently been dismantled, due to natural disintegration; the third sculpture will also eventually return to the forest floor.

Tim Norris
Hill Seat, 1994/5 (pictured)
Coppice Seat, 1994/5
Tim Norris has made two seats, one dug into the chalk, the other nestled within a coppiced chestnut. Unusual and unexpected, they nevertheless integrate with the existing landscape and provide welcome rest on the long North Downs Way.

Emily Allchurch
Walkway, 1994
Emily Allchurch used timbers to raise and shape pathways around a natural soak. The wood has rotted over time and the paths are now returning to their former, purely functional state.