Stephen Hart is a city dweller and a traveller. Cities everywhere are getting bigger. Humans congregate and as we do we form vast structural agglomerations.
When I am not stressed by the increasing tempo generated within this man-made density, I find them very stimulating places.
There is a new aesthetic emerging as this structural density increases and unlikely combinations of form blend together and become possible. This is endlessly fascinating from a sculptural point of view – it is as though all the pioneering modernist sculpture has grown up to become our built environment. It is very challenging now to envisage a more dynamic sculptural presence than a tower crane looming over a city skyscraper – until you see scores of them loping acres of new construction.
I began to acclimatise myself to this changing reality when I made Wild Blue Yonder. Good, bad or indifferent, it is the future; this was my way to begin to appreciate it.
The transformation of the mass of humanity taking place within the harnessing machinery of a city is definitely awesome. Humour and perspective may help !