Roger Hardy: Siren Festival 2019
Siren Festival 2019
TIME AND TIDE
ACCLAIMED SCULPTOR ROGER HARDY EXAMINED HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE HEALTH OF OUR SEAS WITH AN INSTALLATION IN COLLABORATION WITH SIREN FESTIVAL
“Roger’s installation speaks to Siren’s aspirations with more eloquence, power and emotion than we had ever imagined possible: to help people explore their relationship to the sea, their relationship to each other, and how when we affect the ocean it in turn affects us.” Ian Rowlands, Siren Festival
This wonderful installation formed the focal point for the Festival opening ceremony and was visited by many thousands of visitors between 4-12 August, when it sat directly on Aldeburgh beach by the South Lookout Tower facing the rolling waves of the North Sea. Here it received some beautiful feedback from visitors.
Roger Hardy, a former graphic designer who relocated back to Suffolk in 2000, created this installation for the Festival, examining society’s increasingly dissonant relationship with the natural world. The work reflected his fondness for figurative constructions using locally found estuary and sea worn wood.
Hardy’s work has a timeless quality that evokes an immediate and emotional response that challenges us to reflect on our impact and connection with nature. His exquisitely carved, gnarled and ethereal figures alert us to the decaying material which is needlessly discarded but holds an echo of our own human fragility.
Explaining the work, the Suffolk born artist said.. ‘For a number of years not only has the river Alde and the sea at Aldeburgh been a backdrop and inspiration to my work, but more importantly the source of providing the materials used in my sculptures. Elements are revealed at low tide or washed up on the next high tide. Although the wood I find has mostly been worked by man, nature has reclaimed it and shaped it over time. I am saving it and giving it back life and soul in the form of the human figure. Revealing the layers of history and life it once had’
This considered and honest work, meticulously constructed from reclaimed wood, inspired and stired its audience as they journey towards the installation. It offered them a chance to reconnect with their environment and the environmental issues that face us all.
