Temporary placemaking art

As part of an art4place team Noela M, Kim S, Fiona and I have agreed to do various pieces of ephemeral, or maybe more correctly temporary art, at Mary Cairncross Park as part of the Festival of the Walks.

The theme of the work is the Richmond Birdwing Butterfly; and the work will be done on the 22 August on the Butterfly Walk. If you check out the art4place link you can see that we are doing 5 pieces of work. I have committed to do a Sea of Butterflies (really only a small pond of butterflies); and a Big(ish) Richmond Birdwing Butterfly.

The photo above shows that I am gradually getting a stock of butterflies printed, cut out and mounted on bamboo sticks. Children will be invited to colour these in with crayons; and stick them into the ground as part of an installation at the entrance and exit of the walk. Sometimes I feel I'm on a sweatshop production line with these - probably about 40-60 more to go.

I had decided to create the big butterfly out of split bamboo and paper. Couldn't get my hands on split bamboo and came up with 6 fibreglass fishing rods bought from our recycle shop ($2 each).

As you can see I scaled the butterfly up from A4 to 1.4m wide and about 1m deep; and formed it out of the rods lashed together through a roll of corrugated cardboard.

I tried covering the framework with tissue paper - big failure. So I have now covered it with cheese cloth - tacked in place with double sided tape and glued. I will cover this with tissue paper.

The aim is to invite park visitors to glue paper swatches (25mm square) to create the colour and texture of the male Richmond Birdwing Butterfly - under threat of extinction of course.