Bruton Family holiday 2008: Northumberland - part 8 - Mapping & Mirage

After the loooong trek to Skyspace, it was considerably easier to sell her on the next piece of public art, since it happens to be a mini-golf course called Mapping.

From the press release about Mapping:

Mapping has been designed by artist Wolfgang Weileder to enhance and complement Kielder Water’s beautiful environment. Weileder has taken inspiration for the site-specific piece from the dramatic change in Kielder’s man-made surroundings spanning the past 20-years - before and after the dam was built. North East-based Weileder has cleverly ‘overlapped’ two different maps of Kielder – pre and post dam – to come up with the structures, content, contours and character for the ‘fully functional’ golf course. He wants to create a ‘small scale’ landscape that reflects the historical issues of the area – everything can be traced back to the overlapping maps.
The artist has introduced a more challenging and interactive way of playing the visually stimulating golf course, re-writing the linear rulebook to create a non-linear game that always makes the player think about their surroundings. Weileder has replaced the numbered holes with names instead and the idea is that the game has no official end or beginning; it’s up to the player to engage and interpret the course in their own particular way. Traditionally people queue up and wait for the next person to finish, Mapping allows the player to explore the landscape in different ways and creates a ‘public space’ that encourages interaction.

The great thing about it was not just it's artistic delight but the playfulness of the thing as well. The idea behind it there is no particular order to play around the course. Pick a start point, pick a hole, try and get around all of the features. A really great game of golf from Molly and I. but I couldn't help but notice that everyone else looked at the scorecard in confusion, even after reading the instructions to play how you want. Then they flip to the back and see that there's a recommended route for during busiest times. You could almost hear them sigh in relief that someone had taken the choice away from them. But what was annoying was that they then got a little annoyed when Molly and I were playing it the right way and going how we wanted. Bah. Cattle.

Final artwork was late in the day. Mirage by Kisa Kawakami:

Japanese architect and sculptor Kisa Kawakami was commissioned to create an artwork that would reinterpret the landscape of Kielder forest from his own unique view point.
The completed work will animate an area in the forest, inviting a variety of activities for differing age groups while also acting as a device to help visitors to orient themselves in that part of Kielder.
The work will consist of a thousand stainless-steel disks hanging in a three-dimensional shimmering cloud from wires stretched between the trees, which reflect the light from beyond the forest. The artwork will alter its appearance as weather conditions change, the sun moves across the sky and the wind strength fluctuates.

An installation in the forest of a thousand silver discs designed to catch both sun light and the reflection of the lake beyond, turning gently in the breeze and just generally looking pretty and nice. Not as impressive as Skyscape but still nice.

And that was it for Kielder's quite beautiful sculpture and art trail. There are many more pieces dotted around Kielder, but sadly I didn't get chance to investigate them all.

Northumberland 2008 - start here