Nerve 16 - Sandhills’ Giant Secret

The last thing you expect in the run down collection of red-brick factories and warehouses spotted around Sandhills station is an aesthetic experience. Entering one such building you climb a narrow staircase where you’re met by local artist Dave Webster and invited in to his workshop.

Sandhills’ Giant Secret

By Jimmy Stanton

This is a vast space, but it’s filled with reclaimed materials and work both finished and in progress. This is Art on a grand scale – there’s almost too much to take in. There is evidence of Dave’s commercial work, but it’s the current work in progress that really catches the eye. Dominating the main room is a huge boat, Darwin and Wallace sitting aside, a tree of life emerging from the middle, branching off to hominid heads, all powered by a sun, which, eventually, will pulsate light. The centrepiece in the other room is a larger than life naked Greek figure brandishing a spear and shield. The shield is filled with written descriptions of different methods of government and urgent political statements. Intertwined aboriginal heads, a Man and a Bonobo staring at each other through bars, a pregnant woman and black and white confrontational figures all stand around, while a colossal Green Man/Woman, head(s) complete, is a bare structure waiting to be filled with the organic materials of which it will finally consist.

These pieces, eventually numbering around twenty, will form part of a large exhibition which at the moment is mooted to take place in Liverpool One, some time between September and October (Dave is not one of those ubiquitous experts who tap into funding – his priority is his work but ultimately he will be reliant on funding to complete this project in the way he envisages).

The concepts behind the art are on an equally grand scale. Dave is interested in ‘where we, as a species, come from, where we are going and what has gone wrong’. Over the two hours I’m there we talk about everything from the disenchantment of youth to the plight of the honeybee. I ask Dave if he’s ever been tempted to narrow his vision, to focus his art into one particular area but it’s clear that it is the connections that interest him. He wants to draw people in, to fill children with a sense of awe and to give them a chance to sense new possibilities. He believes that the ideas are accessible to anyone and he has a kind of innate belief in the capacity of ordinary people to make their own connections and, even more importantly, ask their own questions. Too much art is obscure and individualistic, an atomised response to a fractured world. Art for Dave is not an individual pursuit but an active social engagement where we connect with the universal. He has worked with children in the past and he loves their enthusiasm and the way they engage with sculptural materials. He enjoys seeing them working with their hands, especially when too much of their lives are spent experiencing the world at a remove. Dave sees art as part of a broad education in life, not an education that is purely directed to fit the economic imperative. He makes his ideas figurative because he wants to inspire the kind of experience he had as a child when visiting the Walker Art Gallery for the first time. His art aims at enticing us out of the fast lane in order to induce moments of contemplation and reflection. For the two hours I’m here it certainly feels like, at the very least, he’s achieved that.

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Comments:

Comment left by Minna Alanko on 3rd September, 2010 at 9:25
This was a fantastic story - to uncover some of the real artists in the city!

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