The Boars of Sally Island – Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal, Botanical Garden, Montréal, Québec

The Boars of Sally Island is the first "ecological work" presented at Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal. It is the work of Sally Matthews, an English artist whose main inspiration is her love of animals. These boars are not, strictly speaking, works of mosaiculture. Rather, they represent a new trend, that of so-called ecological works: creations with an often ephemeral quality, made from organic materials and inspired by nature.

Though Matthews prepares the metallic exoskeletons of her animals in her workshop, she works for the most part in situ, that is, in the forest, where she gathers dead branches and other plant debris with which to bring her sculptures to life. The Boars of Sally Island was made by this talented artist at the Montreal Botanical Garden, on the island located at the entrance to the willow plot. Sally was inspired to create and to impart life and motion to her boars using dead plant matter from the site.

Matthews describes her work in these words:

"Everyone has their own reasons for using animals in art, but for me I always go back to the animals themselves for inspiration. My love of them, their different form, movement, smell and nature are the reasons for my making them. Their nature, even of a domesticated or trained animal is unpredictable and wild, their presence is always enlivening. I want my work to remind people of our need for animals and the example their nature provides us with.

I was always fascinated by my father’s veterinary and animal anatomy books. Although a knowledge of the bone and muscle structure is invaluable and I measure and draw dead animals in their stillness, it is their movement and life, their spirit that interests me. The way their flesh falls as they lie or their muscle stretches as they turn, or the small movements and noises they make as they feed.

The metal armature, the start of most of my sculptures, is the equivalent of a quick line drawing from life. This has to have an initial spark, a rightness. Then building the muscle and flesh around the frame is like building up the marks on a more worked drawing. The materials I use such as coire fibre, cow muck, steel, copper, wood, all have a relevance to the subject I am making. They usually have a texture and colour that means no surface has to be added. The materials I use for drawing and sculpture are often suggested by the subject, or the place I am working in."

For a description of the art of Mosaiculture and of the Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal competition, please turn to the first photo in this series at:

www.ipernity.com/doc/jonathan.cohen/33872015