Nicolas Deshayes at Battersea Park's Pleasure Gardens
Outdoor sculpture that references the waste which litters our cities
Pump House Gallery is extending Nicolas Deshayes’ first exhibition of outdoor sculpture - a new site-specific work in Battersea Park - to catch the last of the summer sun.
Combining fleshly form with urban infrastructure the work has developed French artist Deshayes’ interest in bodies of water, taking the fountains of Battersea Park’s Pleasure Gardens and the nearby River Thames as his starting points.
Deshayes uses industrial materials and processes to create bulbous and suggestive bodily forms. Reminiscent of organic substances that are squeezed from cracks and crevices, the works also reference the waste that litters our cities as it mingles with drains, pipes, and other urban facilities.
Battersea Park acts as a conduit for these encounters, where the lives of people, trees and animals meet the management of nature on the edge of the river artery. Deshayes is interested in how objects are connected to produce a living metropolis and how this is reflected in our own malleable existence.
For the installation, Deshayes has developed his ongoing series of sculptures in expanding foam. A material most commonly used for buoyancy in shipbuilding, he uses it to create forms that hint at anatomy or plumbing systems. These cast aluminium forms stand and hover on the water of the Pleasure Gardens’ pools, disrupting the traditional spectacle of the fountain as they draw water up and sputter, spit and dribble it back to where it came from.
Catch the exhibition before September 16th at the Pleasure Gardens which are situated in the middle of Battersea Park.
August 31, 2018