{"id":4348,"date":"2019-08-12T17:47:23","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T16:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodvale.com\/?p=4348"},"modified":"2019-08-12T17:47:23","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T16:47:23","slug":"natural-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/natural-response\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural Response – Tania Kovats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Driven to explore our relationship with environment and landscape Tania Kovats<\/strong> has travelled the globe working on incredible sculptural installations. She talked to Fergus Byrne<\/strong> about her love of sculpture and a career that nearly didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

She is selecting sculpture for the 2019 Marshwood Arts Awards.<\/p>\n

In an essay about the artist Tania Kovats, writer Philip Hoare describes her work as re-animating \u201cthe myths and realities of landscape in her imagination and ours.\u201d He sees her \u201ccontinually building and rebuilding it like a brick wall in her head.\u201d It\u2019s a description I\u2019m reminded of as she talks about her motivation and the response to the environment which inspires her to create extraordinary sculptural pieces. The motivation is something she has never been able to pin down, but the response is constant. \u2018I\u2019m just very driven with what I do\u2019 she says. \u2018I just don\u2019t think I could do anything else; it\u2019s what I was made for.\u2019 She describes it as like an engine that\u2019s always on. \u2018There\u2019s always another work that needs to be made.\u2019<\/p>\n

The need to dissect, explore, investigate and interrogate the landscape, indeed the environment around her, is physical. She loves the tactile nature of sculpture. Her current exhibition \u2018Divers\u2019 at Berwick Visual Arts in Berwick-upon-Tweed involved filling wetsuits with concrete, and after setting, peeling off the rubber remains of the suits. The result is extraordinary, but she recalls the process as a \u2018real wrestle\u2019, although conversely, she also found it \u2018a deeply erotic experience\u2019. Despite casting in concrete, her current material of interest is water, and the \u2018Divers\u2019 are inverted as if they are diving through the floor\u2014a probe \u2018testing human limits\u2019.<\/p>\n

Moving to live by a mill in Devon has had an influence on her work. She began to concentrate on water as her source of inspiration and material. She visited the Arctic which had a \u2018massive impact\u2019 helping her to see how places she had visited previously\u2014jungle and desert\u2014interconnected with the Arctic and with each other. \u2018Water is the connecting element\u2019 she says, realising that all the landscape works she had done before were made by water. \u2018Water is the sculptor.\u2019 From glaciers making valleys to rivers making a gorge, she sees water as a \u2018dynamic force\u2019.<\/p>\n

Looking back on earlier work, even TREE, a commission from the Natural History Museum to celebrate the bicentenary of Charles Darwin, looks like water. The final result is the shape of a tree embedded into the roof of the Natural History Museum. \u2018It looks like a delta\u2019 she says. \u2018The tree is a big straw sucking up fluid.\u2019<\/p>\n

Water might be a fitting symbol of the ebb and flow of her creative journey to date. Her deep affinity with sculpture got off to a shaky start at the Royal College of Art where she felt \u2018the place was sort of haunted by people chiselling on stone and macho bronze casting.\u2019 She knew that wasn\u2019t what she wanted and battled with the traditional interpretation of the word \u2018sculpture\u2019. However, a spell in Rome on a scholarship changed her view. Spending time immersed in the relationship between sculpture and architecture, the city and the body helped her realise she didn\u2019t have to be scared of \u2018the S word\u2019 anymore. \u2018It is who I am, it is what I do\u2019 she says. \u2018Sculpture is the most incredible thing ever.\u2019<\/p>\n

But things might have been very different. Told by a tutor at the Royal College of Art that she probably wouldn\u2019t have an exhibition until she was in her forties and more likely would give up, get married and have children, was a shocking and potentially deflating experience. However, she dispatched that prophesy to its rightful place by winning the Barclays Young Artist Award in 1991. She remembers attending the opening night at the Serpentine Gallery where she was the only woman exhibiting alongside people like Peter Doig and Douglas Gordon. Each selected artist was given a cheque, and she recalls feeling \u2018cross\u2019 when all the names were read out, and hers wasn\u2019t. Deflated and angry, her mood suddenly changed on hearing that there was one more announcement\u2014the overall winner was Tania Kovats. \u2018I was so excited\u2019 she recalls.<\/p>\n

It was one of the turning points in her career. One that helped her to understand the need to become visible and the value of initiatives like Arts Awards. \u2018You have to seek it out\u2019 she says of success and recognition. \u2018Becoming visible is so important. They call it an artwork and some of that work happens in the studio with just you and the object, but so much of it happens beyond that. Engaging with the world, being present, making the work present, that\u2019s all part of the artwork.\u2019 She agrees that for many artists being brave and promoting their work can be an uncomfortable experience but explains: \u2018You have to balance that introverted process with putting yourself out there.\u2019<\/p>\n

Tania Kovats ran the MA Drawing at University of the Arts London until 2018 when she was appointed Professor of Drawing at Bath Spa University. She has work in collections including Arts Council Collection, UK, the British Council Collection, the Contemporary Arts Society, London and the Victoria & Albert Museum and is represented by the Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London.<\/p>\n

Tania will be choosing sculptors to exhibit alongside her at the Marshwood Arts Awards 2019 in November. For information or to submit work for consideration visit www.marshwoodawards.com<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Driven to explore our relationship with environment and landscape Tania Kovats has travelled the globe working on incredible sculptural installations. She talked to Fergus Byrne about her love of sculpture and a career that nearly didn\u2019t happen. She is selecting sculpture for the 2019 Marshwood Arts Awards. In an essay about the artist Tania Kovats, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-4348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-features","tag-fergus-byrne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}