NZ sculptor dreams up latest Eden Project
29 Apr 2010
Leading New Zealand sculptor Chris Booth has been invited to create a major UK£12 million underground feature for England's renowned Eden Project.
The Eden Project has commissioned the Kerikeri, Bay of Islands, artist to craft a 120-metre long, walk-through underground sculpture that is destined to carry a sustainability message from Down Under.
Still in the design phase, the sculpture will be created in passageways at the popular tourist destination gardens that opened in 2001 in an unused Cornish china-clay pit.
Living theatre
Billed as a "living theatre of plants and people", Eden Project attracts more than a million visitors each year.
Booth will create what Eden Project directors call a "subterranean living sculpture" consisting of 12 chambers connected by 300m of passageways that will allow people to explore the world of fungi and lower plants, such as ferns, mosses, liverwort and algae.
Thirty light-shafts beam natural light to the underground chambers 30m below the clay pit floor.
Sustainability education
Booth says one of Eden's goals is to educate visitors about sustainability and how much humans rely on plants for day-to-day necessities.
However, there was no explanation of the importance of lower plants such as fungi, which recycled dead material and were vital to plant growth, or phytoplankton which produced half the world's oxygen, he said.
"I wanted to take people back into the earth which is the provider of all these plants we use."
Suspended gardens
Design drawings show one chamber featuring a giant chandelier festooned with ferns hanging from the ceiling.
In another, visitors will travel in a compressed-air-powered lift to a viewing module surrounded by black oil which reflects a 360-degree projection of live, moving images of phytoplankton from a domed ceiling.
The sculpture's main feature is a 30-metre-high cathedral-like chamber with suspended vertical gardens.
"The visitor will be struck by radiant colour from light beaming through the leaves of the plants," says Booth.
Challenging sculpture
The artist says the Eden Project is his biggest and most challenging sculpture to date.
Booth is working with scientists and engineers on the project, including consultants who built the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium and Water Cube aquatics centre in Beijing.
"All the scientists I've worked with have said there's nothing like this in the world," he said.
Although funding for a feasibility study and capital costs are yet to be found, Booth says he is optimistic that Eden's chief executive Tim Smit - who founded the massive UK£135m Eden Project - will find a way of making the sculpture a reality.
"If there's anyone on this planet who can make this happen it's him."
Eden Project was delighted to be working on such an ambitious project with an artist of Booth's calibre, Smit said.
"The sketches are beguiling and the early tentative practical feasibility remains promising. We are excited by this and are confident that this extraordinary project will capture the imagination," Smit said.
Background: Chris Booth - NZ sculptor
Chris Booth was born in 1949 in Kerikeri - a small town in New Zealand’s Northland region.
He studied fine arts at the University of Canterbury, followed by two years of specialist sculptural study under prominent sculptors, such as Barbara Hepworth and Denis Mitchell.
In 1982, Chris Booth was the recipient of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship - one of New Zealand’s premier arts residencies.
His works, mostly made on commission, are usually monumental in form, and can be found throughout New Zealand, Australia, Europe, and North America.
Booth was featured in the 1991 documentary film When A Warrior Dies which focused on his construction of a huge sculpture at Matauri Bay, in Northland.
Built for the local Ngati Kura Maori people, the sculpture stands before the resting place of the MV Rainbow Warrior - the Green Peace vessel that was bombed by French government agents in Auckland Harbour in 1985.
Chris Booth is renowned for work that is both monumental and ethereal. Some sculptures appear to defy gravity while others use organic processes to allow a shifting in their position over time.
The artist creates for specific sites to honour local history, mythology and culture, and undertakes intensive research and consultation with local indigenous people in each project.
Chris Booth has recently completed a major commission Echo Van de Veluwe at the prestigious Kröller - Müller museum in the Netherlands.
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