The work 'bldngs' by artist Marie Lund

'bldngs' is a new site-specific installation by artist Marie Lund, situated in the Botanical Garden’s Palm House. It consists of five double-curved sculptures that were shaped, punched and stretched from copper sheets, then coated with a thick liquid natural resin.

Hanging from the cast-iron columns in the glasshouse, they follow the form of the large palm leaves and reflect the scale of the visitor. Reminiscent of wedges whose shape defines both an encounter and a separation, the sculptures articulate the transitions between architecture, vegetation and body. They act as a frame for a reflection on the Palm House and its complex historical and cultural context, as a place where relationships between nature and culture are displayed and negotiated.

The installation is presented alongside a newly commissioned text by writer Laura McLean-Ferris.

About the artist

Marie Lund (1976, DK) has exhibited extensively in Denmark and internationally. Her artistic practice arrives from a contemplation on the interdependencies between architectural space, objects, and bodies.

Her sculptural works hold references to existing, functional objects, which she releases from their original use and transforms, through tensile material processes, into abstract sculptural structures. Often situated in relation to liminal positions of a space, and in resistance to the notion of sculptures as autonomous objects, they outline and activate their environment, encompassing encounters between body and space, and exchange with artworks by other artists.

In turning to ideas of hosting and openness, space is given rather than merely occupied. Accordingly, Lund’s sculptures resonate as social as well as spatial frameworks, fostering mutual forms of dependency within exhibition formats.