Hitting a wall of Hepworth look-a-like.

Sometimes the stars don’t align for months and a studio visit doesn’t happen nearly as soon as hoped. In this case I was delighted to finally be able to visit Eleni Zervou, an artist that I’d first seen around her graduation and had followed through her residency at APT studios and beyond.

I’d originally been drawn to the drawings, was then intrigued by her sculptures and finally rushed to rearrange a studio visit after seeing a new painting online. The painting was as good in the flesh as hoped, but it was the sculptures that I kept thinking about over the following days.

Her theriantropic sculptures (the mythological ability or affliction of individuals able to metamorphose into animals or hybrids) were beautiful, dignified, haunting and disturbing. The originals are made from jesmonite, which is a material that is happy outside, but a conversation around bronze editions, led me back to a discussion I’ve had several times with collectors looking for credible contemporary art for their gardens or grounds.

This is something I’ve written about in the past – the first time following a question in a pre Covid Telegraph advice column “First World Problems’, but as summer approaches, and as the question keeps being asked, I’ll reprise my answer here.

There can be many reasons for wanting to buy art for your garden: you can be looking for something to space out or backdrop the planting; you might be thinking of a sculpture as almost architectural; or perhaps the work is to add an element of humour or whimsy to the garden – pixies and lions emerging from the flower beds. In some cases, you can go to builders or fabricators to see if they can quote for the kind of thing you’re imagining, but, if you’re looking for contemporary art, you need to find contemporary artists.

There are galleries and even garden centres that will offer generic sculptures, often poor re-workings of past masters, but these can be expensive, and they are often little more than patinated baubles. Even if you go to galleries that specialise in sculpture, the chances are that you will be shown a dry range work – interesting outdoor sculpture is hard to find. If you are able to see a lot at once then you might find something that engages you. ‘The Sculpture Park’ south of Farnham in Surrey offers you the chance to wander around and look at over a thousand pieces of incredibly varied sculpture in a woodland setting. I’m not sure that much of the work would be an investment, but there is enough on view for you to begin to make an informed selection, and if a particular piece chimes with you or the intended setting, then maybe that is enough.

I think you can demand more of your outdoor sculpture, but in demanding more you need help from someone who knows where to look. When collectors have approached me in the past, looking for contemporary art as garden sculpture, I have suggested work that I think they will love and that works in the space, but which is also an investment in an artist who is making genuinely thoughtful contemporary work - contemporary in the sense of being rooted in the cultural present whilst acknowledging the art historical past.

When moving away from the frightening price bracket of work by celebrated artists like Carol Bove or Ugo Rondinone, I found that putting together a selection of sculpture for thousands rather than tens or hundreds of thousands was difficult. Outdoor sculptures are usually large works that need to be able to brave the elements and the production costs alone can be high. There are inspiring artists like Douglas White and Brian Griffiths whose series, ‘Black Palms’ and ‘For the Wilderness’ respectively, are examples of more affordable contemporary outdoor sculpture, but when I wanted to offer my clients a broad selection, I kept hitting a wall of generic Hepworth look-a-like work.

A solution came through approaching artists who I thought might be interested in proposing new work. To this end, credible artists - painters as well as sculptors, but particularly artists whose work involved a variety of materials or was made in a variety of forms - were asked to present “ideas that they’d always wanted to realise”. I soon had a dozen original proposals from artists who I knew to be serious. Not only could we be sure of the quality of thought, but it was also exciting to be there at the origin of these pieces and involved in early decisions around materials and size. And providing artists with the opportunity to realise a long dreamed of project, working directly with them, allowed for the work to be created at significantly lower costs than if bought through a gallery.

Another solution involves working with artists who have already created brilliant sculpture, made for indoor display, and then helping to work out how to make it suitable for outdoor display. A recent, and incredibly gratifying, project was the installation of Andy Holden’s ‘Synthesis of Judgement’ (Bower) sculpture beside a lake in a collector’s grounds. The sculpture is made of three component parts: an internal treated metal frame, a marine plywood base, which is overlayed with bark, and 300kg of 8ft willow stems. The sculpture was fabricated in 2017, had toured exhibitions and museums for 4 years, showing no signs of wear and tear, and the metal frame and plywood base that underpin the sculpture were both treated and would therefore be expected to have a long lifespan outdoors, but the willow was more subject to the elements. After a lot of back and forth with experts and groundsmen, a plan for long term care, preservation and longevity was agreed and the willow was sprayed and treated. The bower was installed last year and it is a real testament to Holden’s artistic ambition and the collector’s farsightedness.

Eleni Zervou’s five hybrid figures, recreated in bronze, are a less troublesome proposition, and I look forward to proposing them as an installation to suitable collectors.

On other news, I’m delighted to have agreed on the long-term use of a space. A viewing room in Alton in Hampshire, it will be open by appointment only, with the first exhibition from April 4th of new paintings by Hannah Murgatroyd. They’re such physically significant works that I’m delighted to be able to show people the surface in person. I’ll add details of the exhibition next week.

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