Justine Cook and Rachel Ramchurn

Something Beautiful Marquee

2008-07-24T20:35:00.001+01:00

A circular journey.

So, here is how our sculpture travelled around, and now it will stay in the marquee until the end of the week when it will be going to live in Ness Botanical Gardens.

For more information about the artists please contact:

Justine Cook

http://justinecook.blogspot.com/
http://www.justinecooksculpture.com/
email: jcsculpture@gmail.com

Rachel Ramchurn
http://rachelramchurn.blogspot.com/
email: rachelclementine@gmail.com

Knutsford Floral Walk Garden

2008-07-24T20:31:00.000+01:00

A chance to create a square form.

Designer: Green Graphite Limited - Shelley Mosco
Promotion of Knutsford

A Garden for Bees

2008-07-24T20:27:00.000+01:00

Lovely Bee's.

It's as if the wood has decided to escape. An unravelling of sorts.

Designer: Ness Botanic Gardens
Contractor: Ness Botanic Gardens

Circul8

2008-07-24T20:24:00.001+01:00

A chance to create a circle. Does what it says on the tin.

Designers: Ground Duo Landscaping - Robert Walker & Helen Connolly
Sponsor: Parkinson's Disease Society

Natural Distinction

2008-07-24T19:58:00.000+01:00

A big audience for this one.

A curve of grass calling out to be highlighted.

Designer: Jackie Knight Landscapes
Sponsors: Jackie Knight Landscapes in association with Greenwood Nurseries & Handspring Design Studios
Contractor: Jackie Knight Landscapes

Aqua Life

2008-07-24T19:53:00.000+01:00

A great piece.

I love the formality of a row of trees together, so of course we had to interact with that, hence the curve to highlight the line.

Designer: Phillippa Probert
Sponsors: Merseybeams Limited, Cambrian Concrete Products
Contractor: Premier North West Limited

East meets West

2008-07-24T19:46:00.000+01:00

We had help from the garden designers laying this one out. A very hard piece to document, another gorgeous garden.

We wanted to lay a single disc on each of the cubes bridging the water, to contrast the formality and precision of the slate cubes with the organic circles of wood. Two simple shapes - square and circle - interacting with a straight white line echoing the design of the cubes layout. Do they look like sushi to anyone else?

Designer: Dan Sterry (Urban Vision Partnership Design Studio)
Sponsors: Urban Vision Partnership Limited, Casey Group of Companies
Contractor: Casey Group of Companies

Paradise Isle - A Western View

2008-07-24T19:43:00.000+01:00

This was a challenge to create in such a small environment, and we rose to it!

The contrast of the silver birch against the slate worked well.

Designer: Sam Youd (Tatton Park)
Contractor: Tatton Park

Installation in Chris Beardshaw's Cheshire's Year of Gardens 08

2008-07-24T19:03:00.000+01:00

So this was the first garden that we worked in. We both felt the sculpture was effective in this environment. Very skeletal.

I feel that the sculpture worked best here. It reminded me of a spinal cord. An overhead shot of the piece would perhaps have revealed this quality more than we have managed to convey in our photographs.

Tatton Park

2008-07-24T17:53:00.000+01:00

Justine and myself have spent two days at RHS Tatton Park working on the first Collaboration of what will hopefully be many.

We both worked on projects for the Something Beautiful Commission as part of Cheshire Year of the Gardens 2008. Justine worked at Little Morton Hall, Rachel worked at Arley Hall.
Through these experiences it was decided that the RHS Show at Tatton Park would be the perfect platform for our first collaborative Commission.
We decided to use the most simple aspects of our work - for Justine this meant highlighting negative spaces within a structure, for Rachel this meant cutting wood into it's most simple form and sanding to get a perfect finish.
We decided a straight cut through each piece would provide the negative space and visually hold the sections together.
We knew that all the pieces would be brought together to make a whole, and we wanted the sculpture to interact with the show.

These images show our working space at the RHS Show, the work in progress, and Justine having a play.

Our brief was to create something site specific to the RHS Tatton show. Tatton gave us the tree trunks on the Friday before the show then Rachel worked furiously to cut and sand them in time for the show opening on Wednesday. I had never worked with wood in this way before and trusted Rachel on the wood front absolutely. We felt that a multi-component work would be the most effective way to create an interactive piece. This was a new way of working for Rachel. Combining wood discs with a linear white line provided us with flexibility in how to place the work in each garden. On Wednesday, after painting and oiling the discs, we approached several gardens with our idea and fortunately they were all really supportive.