If you were standing on the moon, observes sculptor Paul Edmunds, two of the features of the world’s landscape you would see from that distance would be the extraordinarily named Fresh Kills landfill of Staten Island, New York, arguably the largest human-made structure in the world, and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. The landfill is growing, notes Edmunds, while the Reef, affected by man-made pollution and global warming, is shrinking.
This observation, linking the heavy footprint of man on the planet with the celebration of its natural beauty, now so under threat by commercial interests and global warming, underlies much of Edmunds’s work and process as a sculptor. Living and working in Cape Town, Edmunds walks around the city, taking note of small items of discarded detritus—a length of discarded telephone cable with its core of brightly colored wires, Styrofoam coffee cups—in Edmunds’s eyes, each has a unique structure and holds potential as an element in one of his sculptures.
Humble as his materials may be, Edmunds devises an exact process for each new piece according to a precisely calculated formula of treatment and accumulation. Reef (2001), an installation of Styrofoam cups, was based on coral structures studied by Edmunds in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal on South Africa’s east coast and also in Western Australia. Adapting a small craft knife to give him the accuracy of cut needed, Edmunds cut 200 images of arrows, the symbol of recycling, into each of 400 cups for an astonishing total of 80,000 arrows. In installation the arrows read simply as small regular fissures in the semitranslucent surfaces of the crenellated columns, suggesting the increasingly fragile and porous nature of threatened coral in the world’s oceans.
Sponge (2003) is a swath of metal fabric woven by Edmunds from springs he created by wrapping wire around a broom handle, then pushing them into each other at angles, a process that introduces pleasing variations of density and patterning into the fabric. The cavelike form of Sponge was suggested by a circular shadow cast into the corner of the artist’s studio.
The large-scale linocut The Same but Different (2000) explores, says Edmunds, “the notion of the distinct, unique self which seems to dominate Western thinking.” Starting at the center of the piece of lino, the artist carved a single meandering line and, working from side to side without ever interrupting or breaking his line, followed its journey until the work was complete.
Perhaps the print could be seen as a metaphor for Edmunds’s practice—intense activity at the center, a long and sustained effort using simple materials, leading to a restrained and elegant result. With great depth.
Sponge 2003
Galvanized wire
Dimensions variable
Image courtesy of João Ferreira Gallery
Photographer: Michael Hall
© Paul Edmunds
Sieve 2003
Polypropylene mesh, cable ties
Dimensions variable
Image courtesy of the artist
Photographer: Michael Hall
© Paul Edmunds
Reef (detail) 2008
Dimensions variable
Installation at Bank Gallery, 2008
Image courtesy of the artist
Photographer: Andrew Griffin
© Paul Edmunds
The Same but Different 2000
Linocut
182 x 94 cm
Image courtesy of the artist
Photographer: David Southwood
© Paul Edmunds