Laurence Edwards - A Thousand Tides

Laurence Edwards', A Thousand Tides, is an over life sized Bronze figure laying supine. On leaving his studio in Butley Edwards submerged A Thousand Tides beneath the nearby creek whose tidal flows and mud flats refuse a discreet rendering of the local landscape. The swamp had come to inspire much of Edwards work which incorporates driftwood, found materials, and shifting masses of figures. The land upon which A Thousand Tides rests exists only at low tide and for much of the year the figure is consumed by the river. Eventually the sculpture itself will be swallowed up by the ever-shifting swamp lands, not far from historic Saxon burial sites.

Edwards use of the landscape and its shifting cycles and rhythms is what drew me to his work. He often places his work at the indiscreet boundaries of landscapes grounding his work in unstable borders and shifting coastlines. These are places that defy desires of stability, ownership, and order. Highlighting this, the sculpture itself has become something of a problem for local authorities who receive calls of a strange body within the river. Whilst the figures Edwards produces are oftentimes monumental - A Thousand Tides being 2.4m tall - by placing them within landscapes that defy the traditions of monumental sculpture his work takes on an instability and impermanence characteristic of their context.

Edwards work can be found on his website here.