Claire Knill has been selected as installation artist at this year’s Affordable Art Fair, which runs from May 7 till 11 on Hampstead Heath.
Claire’s art is for sale at Lara Bown Contemporary, a private art gallery in Hove, and she had been attending the fair with the gallery for several years, before the opportunity arose to become installation artist.
“Because the nature of my work is bigger and more unusual, the installation was the perfect opportunity to create a bit of a showstopper”, she said.
For the fair, Claire has created The Willow Tree: a large-scale kinetic sculpture to be unveiled at the fair’s private view. The sculpture is designed to move with air currents and interact with natural light, mirroring the rhythms of nature.
Claire said: “It’s a large-scale suspended sculpture made of lots of hanging geometric shapes hanging.
“In my sculptures, I try to achieve a meditative feeling. When making The Willow Tree, I thought about my life down here on the coast as well as the Heath, which is a beautiful expansive area, and the connections between these places.
“There is that feeling when you’re sitting on the beach, and you look out onto the horizon and you’re able to feel part of something bigger and a sense of peace.
“My work has a playful element. The installation is inspired by that feeling when you’re surrounded by something wondrous and beautiful.
“When I was a kid, we had a big willow tree outside our house, and I remember playing in it and looking up at the branches and thinking ‘wow’.”
Because The Willow Tree is four metres high, it is too big to be constructed in one piece at Claire’s studio, so she has made it in sections.
She has seen it all together once, when she took advantage of the Regency Town House’s “beautiful high ceilings” to put the sections together.
She said: “Until it’s in three-dimensional form and able to move, I don’t know exactly what it will look like. I have to take the time to sit and see how it moves.”
The piece has been specifically designed for the fair, but some of Claire’s smaller pieces will be for sale at the Lara Bown stand – “you don’t have to have a four-metre house”.
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