We’re delighted to welcome a new artwork into Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Stachys by Rebecca Newnham.
Rebecca Newnham has had a proactive career in art and design for over 25 years and her work has been enjoyed all over the world. She has worked in many spaces, using a multitude of mediums for many public, interior, and exterior artworks.
Rebecca accepts private commissions and art projects.
Last August, Rebecca appeared in the Wander_land exhibition hosted by the Royal Society of Sculptors at Tremenheere Gallery where she presented her Sacred Water Series with four glass mosaic pieces.
Now in the Gardens sits Stachys comprising of a steel structure and base, fiberglass form, gold mica glass mosaic, white gesso. It is group of 5 uprights joined at the base; the base is in 2 sections.
Stachys is about a life cycle: the mass flowering of bamboo, where a whole species blooms and then dies, producing an enormous quantity of seed. The whole species then germinates; a quality unique to some bamboo. The arms lift and open towards the sky, in a celebration of the natural world.
Stachys was created following a residency at Sir Harold Hillier Arboretum when Newnham had an opportunity to immerse herself both in the planting of the gardens and research in the extensive herbarium. The resulting body of work considered number sequences and proportion in the natural world, such as golden section and Fibonacci. Numbers help identify and classify in the plant world, for example some flowers are trimerous or have multiples of 3 petals, whilst others have multiples of 5 petals. Some flowering plants are monocots and others are dicots, and the differences can be seen in the way a seed germinates, how many apertures it’s pollen has, and other characteristics.
Dimensions: 2.20m H x 2.33m W x 2.33m
Date: 2008
There are a huge variety of bamboos, one example is the clumping genus Phyllostachys. The floret-bearing spikelets are enclosed in deciduous sheath like bracts. The name Phyllostachys is derived from the Greek ‘phyllos’ or ‘leaf’ and ‘stachys’ or ‘spike’.
Some species of bamboo flower as rarely as every 130 years, and are known as monocarpic. A mass flowering, when the spikes produce a fluorescence and eventually seed, heralds the imminent death of such a variety, and the plant then regenerates from the seed produced. The spikes and their bracts that protect developing seed, are focused upon, to celebrate this invigoration and a circle of life, in Stachys.
Stachys can be found at the end of the boardwalk through the woods, planted at the top of the steps.
The Sculpture Gardens are open daily, 10-30 – 4.30, last entry 3.30.
