Giant hay sculptures to travel from East Anglia to Orleans House Gallery

Walking along The Sainsbury Centre sculpture park, you’ll be greeted by three towering shaggy forms. The haystack-like sculptures are like sleepy giants seated in a field. They seem like they could stand up and stroll along to their next resting place. While the sculptures themselves might not walk from Norfolk to Richmond, they will make their way to Orleans House Gallery in March 2025 for our upcoming Cultural Reforesting exhibition. 

The sculptures – Reaper I, II and III by artist Ivan Morison – are a co-commission between Orleans House Gallery and The Sainsbury Centre. They are the artist’s response to our Cultural Reforesting question, ‘How can we renew our relationship with nature?’, and The Sainsbury Centre’s current curatorial theme, ‘Why do we take drugs’?  

Ivan brings these questions together. He explores eco-centric approaches to farming and the use of pesticides, chemicals and drugs in agriculture. In doing this, he draws parallels between the emphatically important role of the artist and the farmer. 

Ivan worked with local farmers in East Anglia, searching for those operating at the radical edge of agriculture today. The sculptures arose from his research with these farmers. They are made of the farmers’ straw, bean stalks and hemp, in addition to hay and branches from The Sainsbury Centre’s sculpture park. Their forms come from life drawing sessions Ivan held with farmers, in which farmers posed as the nude life models. In addition to giving the sculptures their shape, the life drawing sessions highlight the commonalities between farmers and artists. Both are identities and ways of life, and both must navigate overextended funding bodies and distorted markets. 

The Reapers will change during their winter and early spring at The Sainsbury Centre. The plant materials will break down and begin to decay. Some may start sprouting new growth in the spring. They will take on new life at Orleans House Gallery, connecting our grounds on the edge of a sprawling city to the food grown for us in more rural areas of the country.