Forest fields

Piper was awarded a commission to produce a site-specific work as part of the group exhibition ‘Next We Change Earth’.
As part of this Piper conducted a body of local archival research into the history of the site and the large area of adjacent parkland ‘The Forest Recreation Ground’. This area had been transformed from common land under the ‘Inclosure Act’ in 1845 and then transformed into parkland by Joseph Paxton who also designed The Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Evoking the symbolic status of Paxton as a key player in the re-imagining of both local and global terrain during this, the high water mark of imperialism, Piper produced a three channel HD video installation presenting a series of image and text based mediations around historical narrative and local landscape.
The location of this video installation within the gallery space adjacent to the parkland under discussion had impact to the extent that it passed information onto local residents around the specific history of the area and it’s importance within wider national discourses.

Originally produced to form part of the inaugural exhibition, celebrating the opening of the New Art Exchange gallery in Nottingham in 2008.