Jonathan Freemantle ‘The Fallen Tree’

We are delighted to be presenting two new works at Bard by the Edinburgh-based South African artist Jonathan Freemantle. The two sculptures are part of a body of work titled ‘The Fallen Tree’ that Jonathan made during a seven-month residency at the former studio and cottage of artist and musician Rory McEwen in Fogo, which is today part of the Hugo Burge Foundation.

Early in his residency, and responding to the immersion in his natural surrounds, Freemantle was compelled to begin experimenting in three-dimensional sculpture alongside his painting on canvas. A chance encounter with Toby Loveday, the head gardener at the neighbouring Marchmont Estate, resulted in the gift of a Cedar tree, which had fallen during storm Arwen in November 2021.

Freemantle sensitively and systematically began carving sections of the century-old Cedar with a chainsaw, a grinder, and other hand tools. The totemic sculptures that emerged, some on granite bases and some free-standing, are variously contemplative and commanding. All are finished with beeswax, which lends the carved markings of the works a softness and tactility, as if smoothed over centuries by hand. They stand apart from time.

Freemantle cites a range of influences across history and culture: Cycladic sculpture; Celtic monuments; Midcentury modernist British sculpture, African ritual masks and Michelangelo’s Pieta; the works of Isamu Noguchi and Constantin Brancusi; Japanese Zen painting and the art of Jackson Hlungwani. While there are echoes and resonances of each here, the resounding muse was Fogo itself and the natural environment of Freemantle’s surrounds.

“I’ve always been fascinated by objects that convey a deep reverence towards nature as a gateway to the soul,” Freemantle explains. “Totems are lightning rods to the spiritual world, and I find this very moving. There is something transcendental about burning as part of the process – using fire as a tool imbues the works with a spiritual dimension. These are abstract sculptures but at certain angles they become familiar forms, in places sometimes animal-like or figurative. They are enigmatic and mercurial. It’s a strange thing making new works that feel ancient.”

The Fountain of Youth

Scorched cedar

150 x 20 x 20cm

Go out naked in the Wind, Your skin Almost Aeolian

Scorched cedar, stone base

55 x 20 x 20cm