The Wedding

by Sonja van Kerkhoff, 2004

Made at the 2004 9 Dragonheads Environment Arts Symposium view photos I took around Daechang Lake (a nature reserve about 2 hours south of Seoul), South Korea.

Responding to the festival theme of Beautiful Garbage, and I decided to hang eight metres of white silk onto this 'art garbage'. The boat-form of branches is the remains of an unfinished work from a previous festival.

I decided that my hanging or decorating was like marrying these 'remains' with the silk, and decided on a decorative association for "beauty" and hence the title: The Wedding. The decorative aspect of a marriage.

Then a day earlier while walking with Park, the festival co-ordinator, we came across a couple having their wedding photos taken in front of this work! We then asked them to pose for us. You see the branches on the lower right of the dress. It seemed like the icing on the cake :)

I decided to 'accept' these branches as they were and so I didn't change the arrangement at all. My approach here is more an intervention than a sculpture. This seemed fitting for the festival theme and the title of the work.

• The Wedding, Daechang Lake, South Korea.
• Dans le Jardin des beaux arts, Cheongju City Art Gallery, Nine Dragonheads festival.
• Change is a Law of Nature, Cheongju City Art Gallery, Nine Dragonheads festival opening.
• Nine Dragonheads Festival: Most of the 33 artists' work -photos I took at the festival.

• Fruit, six hang cast resin forms, 2006.
• Nga Hau e Wha (The Four Winds/Breaths), metal sculpture, 2004.
• Generating Plant, custom-made birdhouse form, 2004.
• The Wedding, intervention/installation during the 9 Dragonheads festival, 2004.
• Inland Soul at Sea, 19 hanging forms, 2003.
• Colonising Oxford, performances and installations on the streets, 2002.
• Fruits of the Earth, installation/intervention, 2003.
• With fire we test the gold and with gold we test our servants, wooden sculpture at a Sculpture Symposium in a park in Northern Romania, 2003.
• Parking Spaces for Important Visitors, relief painted panels, 2001.
• Inspiration, paintings on shaped canvas laid on the floor, 2001.
• Just pour les oiseaux (Strictly for the birds), installations and performances during a walk through a forest setting led by a guide, 2001.
• Onder vier ogen (Between you and me) , mask-forms hung on trees, with texts and images in the orifices, 2001.
• Dans le jardin des beaux arts, 19 snail forms, (in various locations), 2000-2006.
• The Living Creature, performances in a rose garden in a public park in London, 1999.
• Change is a Law of Nature, 1996, performances on the streets, in Hull and London, U.K. (repeated in other locations in 2001, 2002, and 2004).
• Memorials, ceramic tiles laid into the earth, 1996-2001.
• Te Koru Iwa, fire drawing at the Oerol Arts Festival, The Netherlands, 1996.
• Letters van de Levende :: Letters of the Living, 19 batiked flags, 1996.

the medium

c.v. last things first