Created specifically for this waterfront location, this modular sculpture references Liverpool’s wind and water routes which facilitated the historical import of ‘foreign’ plants into the UK.
1 artist in this exhibition
Informed by her cross-cultural heritage, Anna Gonzalez Noguchi’s art practice is based on a mixture of local research and personal or familial experience. She removes, relocates and reconstructs objects in different geographic territories to give them new meaning and to highlight the fragility of memory and experience.
Plants from the city’s botanical archives, such as the Himalayan Balsam, are engraved onto the work. They were originally collected for ornamental or medicinal use, or for their ‘splendid invasiveness’ – the rapid and widespread growth of certain non-native plants.
From a distance, the work’s metallic surfaces can act like mirrors, causing the structure to flicker in natural light or camouflage into its surroundings. The reflective nature of the work reference show people, wealth and culture migrated to a new place – both throughout history and in present times – will merge to become one with wider society, its landscape and its architecture.
Incorporated into the work are benches which visitors are invited to sit on. The top of each seat features a cutout of the day of the week written in Japanese kanji characters, referencing the natural elements each character signifies. Through these cutouts, the work becomes a physical calendar, tracking days across different moments in time. By sitting alongside other visitors, we mimic the behaviour of plants, cross-pollinating with the work and each other.
Further work by this artist is exhibited at Eurochemist.
Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, with support from Acción Cultural Español.