MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
August 22, 2022
This week we recognize Hugh Pocock Hugh Pocockand his thirty year career engaging with the dynamics of natural and cultural phenomena.
Pocock seeks to integrate the intersections of labor, industry and organic materials, such as water, air, salt, wood and earth. He is interested in the history and metaphor of the human relationship to natural resources, space, time, consumerism, art, energy and language, which he investigates through his sculptures, installations, performances and videos.
Living With A Log (above) was created in 1998, in Ashland, Oregon, and consisted of a 2.5 ton, 42 foot log that was placed inside of a residential home. Daily activities of cooking, eating, sleeping, working and socializing were conducted alongside of the Log.
Pocock's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums including Portikus Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, the Wexner Museum, the Santa Monica Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art. He has also built “non-art sites” for private homes, movie theatres and farms.
Drilling A Well For Water (above) was drilled in the Levi Sculpture Garden of the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2003. This activity was performed live during museum hours. The well reached the water table at 40 feet and a hand pump was installed. The 350 gallons of water from the well was added to the museum's heating and cooling system where it is permanently recycled to create both hot and cold air. This process produced the object Volume which is the volumetric space of the entire museum building.
This Garden, making salt and evaporation drawings (below) was performed at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 2004. Seawater was collected and evaporated to produce salt in the Project Room. The salt was dried, bottled and given away to museum visitors. An Evaporation Drawing was made to mark the time and atmospheric conditions unique to the site for the duration of the exhibition.
No Man’s Land (below) is a proposal for a permanent park for the Non-Humans that Pocock conceived in 2018. The project is ongoing.
"No Man’s Land will be an area of land where humans are prohibited from entering. It is a space where the plants, animals, insects and fungi will have full and sole autonomy. Where they are free from the presence of human beings. The park will not be used for research or organized observation. It is not a place for humans to study or 'enjoy' nature. No tagging, recording, research or human technology of any kind is permitted in No Man’s Land. While it is recognized that Humans are a part of the earth’s ecology, NML is proposed to be a legally protected place where the Non-Humans are guaranteed to be free of the presence of Humans and their actions.
Legal Goals: No Man’s Land is both a physical and a legal space. The legal goal of the project is to establish the living ecology that is within NML as a recognized Legal Entity. Identifying it as a place that can never be interfered with by human acts of possession. This will be done through Trusts, Deeds, local ordinance or another legal device that is to be determined."
Hugh Pocock was born in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and raised in the United States, England and Aotearoa. Time, energy, climate change, social connectivity and the Rights of Nature are among the issues he has investigated and continues to explore. Over the past three decades, he has shown his work in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Santa Fe and Baltimore as well as internationally in the former Soviet Union, Germany and China. He received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and then completed his MFA at UCLA in New Genres. Pocock is a faculty member at Maryland Institute College of Art where he is the founding Coordinator of the Minor in Sustainability and Social Practice and the Studio Major titled "Ecosystems, Sustainability and Justice." He teaches Sculpture, Video and Social Practice courses that focus on the impact of Climate Change and issues of Sustainability. He is also Co-Facilitator of the Global Ecologies Studio taught annually at the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland. Pocock lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. hughpocock.com IG@hughpocockstudio
Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Hugh Pocock, Untitled, 1995, Warner Studios, Los Angeles, glass, soil, Caucasian flesh toned paint; Living With A Log, 1998, Ashland, Oregon; Drilling A Well For Water, 2003, Levi Sculpture Garden, Baltimore Museum of Art; This Garden, making salt and evaporation drawings, 2004, Santa Monica Museum of Art, California; No Man’s Land, 2018- present, proposal for a permanent park for the Non-Humans; photograph of the artist, links to a recent symposium presentation on No Man's Land during the artists' solo exhibition at Burren College of Art, Ireland, June 20 - July 22, 2022.
