Issue 8, 1997 Balance: The Sculptures of Hamish Horsley
“If many people are very critical of art in public places,” says Horsley, “this is because it often does nothing to address what I think is fundamental: harmony in the environment. Public art should create a focus which allows people to relate at a human level to balance and harmony.”
His work called The Way serves as a gateway to Durham Cathedral, in northern England. It does not compete with the cathedral as a second focus; rather it pays homage to the magnificence of the medieval masterpiece.
Hamish Horsley was born in New Zealand, spent several years of his youth in India as a Hindu monk, and has lived in England for the past twenty years where he has a growing reputation as a photographer and sculptor. As a sculptor, he specialises in large works in public places.
He is now a follower of Buddhism, but makes no obvious reference to Buddhist iconography in his art. “How can I imitate a carver of ‘Mani’ stones? All my training, all my artistic references are Western. If I try to imitate, I could finish up creating visual clichés. My beliefs and my art are separate, but totally interwoven.”
Horsley believes that to be successful, public sculptures must have a spiritual input. “I don’t mean spiritual as religious. I mean they must have a sense of spirit, a sense of place. I prefer to use natural imagery and forms, and relate them back into the landscape.”
Horsley is currently working on Samten Kyil, Tibetan for ‘A Garden of Contemplation’. It is situated in the grounds of London’s Imperial war Museum, which shows not the glories of imperial conquest but the horrors of all war. A project of the Tibet Foundation, the Garden is dedicated to world peace and in particular to the message of the Dalai Lama and the sufferings of the Tibetan people.
The sacred heart of the Garden is an authentic Tibetan Kalachakra mandala, designed by monks of the Gyume Tantric College in India and set in black Kilkenny stone. This traditional piece is set among four great panels of contemporary sculptures depicting the four elements (earth, water, air and fire) and surrounded by a pergola of stainless steel and wood.
In this case the project did not begin with a beautiful landscape, but with an ordinary, inner city landscape in which an inspiring space will be created. The aim is an environment which will have an impact; simply walking into the arena described by the pergola will produce an experience for everyone. The beautiful park around it will invite visitors to look again at the richness of the planet we are destroying.
“This is a monument of the time, a monument for the end of the century. It is possible to be consciously contemporary and yet in harmony with the environment around us.”
Written by Dominique Side