From This Day On, 2023
Oak, concrete, steel | 300 x 300 x 165cm
In 2023 the artists installed a large oak stump at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens. What singles out this mass of wood from the park’s curated trees and shrubs is its incongruous type of display. Mounted on simple steel props sunk into a neat, rectilinear concrete platform, the contrast with its surroundings is stark. Its presence is curiously modified to stand out from rather than merge with its kin of natural forms.
The metal props are like giant fingers that, if they were our own, might hold a precious sample in a lab or turn a beautiful jewel in the light to appreciate its details. Time and growth are registered in folds and crevices within its tannin-rich tonality like evidence of centuries of patient development. Heartwood lies at the core of a tree: it is strong and durable, possessing the toughness of steel. Come upon by visitors near the top of the gardens, the exuberance of detail, deep colour, grandeur and surprise seem to share properties with the sculptures found in the open and covered expanses around it.
The piece has the spirit of the Baroque, the florid historical style that emerged in the fine arts, decoration and architecture of the 17th century. They prepared the dried-out wood with precise, fine-grain sand blasting, then sealed the remaining material with a natural oil. Sitting elevated now above ground that once its roots penetrated for survival, the carcass of the tree exists in suspension between reality and fantasy. It would be at home in Versailles. Yet the Mackies have titled the piece From This Day On, a phrase which stresses its future rather than the past. Martin Holman