Is Land was and still is a 7M floating island sculpture made to hover above the Cambridgeshire countryside at this years Secret Garden Party. It danced in limbo like a shaggy Eden, being tossed by the wind or suspended silently. It was one of the core installations at the 2011 art-orientated festival.
It was about to make its final pilgrimage to Burning Man festival where it would float again in the Nevada desert, US. However it was cut down in its prime. Witnesses saw a small group of malicious festival goers, two in a dingy, cut all five tether ropes holding the helium structure at 3am on the Sunday morning of the Secret Garden festival allowing it to float away. The daring £9000, six month project by RCA graduates Sarah Cockings and Laurence Symonds simply floated off into the atmosphere, leaving them completely deflated.
The original Is Land was finished in the Brunel Goods Shed in Stroud, Gloucestershire with a large team of people contributing to its realisation. It took six months of maths, physics and creative DIY to get the huge structure aloft. Now with all of our knowledge and experience the same team are willing to take on the re-make and see it float state-side.
Will the Is Land be found? Or a new balloon be made?
Will the artists get to their dream to get to the Black Rock City in the Nevada Desert.
I hope so!
How can it be lost?
It reminds me of my last Itchycoo painting which I painted last year. It's land floats in the sky within a sea. Of Island's whose mountains are of cake and sticky jam, as strawberries fall from the sky. WHY? Who knows.... What next, guess it's about time I get into Itchycoo no 4. (If you look at the far left hand side of the picture in the middle - The Island below the black and white spotty cat you can see an uncanny likeness.
