Art where you least expect it

Park Life, where the Coastal Currents arts festival meets Egerton Park in humorous harmony, has the subtitle "Art where you least expect it."

Nothing could be more fitting.

Descend the steps into the park from the Egerton Road/Park Road corner and the vista is dominated by a strangely mechanical structure on castor wheels.

Hamish Black cut, seamed and tailored steel sheet into a creation which is entirely abstract yet which contains elements which seem to be saying that they ought to be familiar.

Turn a corner of a footpath and there, among the shrubbery, is the painted, hand-carved wooden figure of a witch being engulfed by flames.

Glance at the island on the boating lake and a wooden crocodile has almost completed a park picnic - at his victim's expense.

Witch and Woman Being Eaten By A Crocodile are the work of local East Sussex artist Christine Kowal-Post and hark back to the German tradition of painted wooden sculpture, common also in Britain until the Reformation.

Her pieces were in fact taken from a collection of her work which was shown in German cities such as Ulm last year under the title Corporeal Insults.

"It shows the vulnerability of human beings..."

Egerton Park lake has seen many dramas of a minor nature in its time. But it is not a model yacht or a paddle boat that has been frozen in time at the moment of sinking but an evocation of a ship foundering.

Will Nash got his inspiration from the sinking of an oil tanker off the French coast last year.

"I have been interested in boat shapes for a while. This sculpture is in fibre glass. I made a mould in negative.

"It was originally designed for an internal space but when they offered me the lake I thought it was such fun."

He also has some brightly-coloured blades standing vertically out of the canal between the two lakes.

"They were commissioned from me by a group called Site Editions, who commission sculptures in the same way that you have limited-edition prints.

"What I wanted to do was to make something that would look good on its own.

"The blades are based on the design of the propeller on a Mustang aircraft. They have lead in their base and will stand upright on land or in the water but lean like a weather vane in the wind."

Spinning wooden hourglass chairs with poems engraved on them are the work of Joc Hare. Called, Doesn't Time Fly, they have instant appeal on a grass border between the model yacht pond and the bridge.

Park visitor Nigel Young tried one of the seats for size along with the Mayor, Rother leader Cllr Graham Gubby, artists Will Nash and Christine Kowal-Post and arts officer Martin Ryan.

His verdict? "They look fun. They're easy on the eye - and they have a beautiful movement and little pieces of poetry!"

Other delights include Janine Creaye's Sleeping Gothic Buddha near the bowling green. Saturday's bowlers were also much taken by Carole Andrews' columns of roofing felt, pleated and stitched into strange, almost prehistoric forms.

Carole is also responsible for an evocation of the seed pods of Physalis Franchetti - the "Chinese Lantern."

Among Saturday's visitors was Sue Quatermass, leader of Nine Days Wonder, the local artists' network which specialises in placing art in interesting places.

With her was Cllr Sue Prochak, who serves on the Arts Council.

Standing by Steve Geliot's spherical wooden carvings of greatly enlarged pollen, bacterium and grain, Cllr Prochak said: "I think this is a wonderful setting for art. I am a great believer in public gardens."

Children have been fascinated as Pondskater, Leigh Dyer's huge metal bug, appears to hover over the surface of the lake near the Wickham Avenue entrance.

Aptly-placed near the children's playground is Life's A Ball, Brigitte Evill's fun sphere which evokes childhood.

Town Mayor Cllr Deirdre Williams, a first-day visitor along with Rother colleagues, said of Martin Ryan's efforts in staging Park Life: "He has done such a terrific job with Jour de Fete and Art Cafe and now this. It all gives people something really interesting to do and to look at in Summer and it's been going on right through the Summer months.

"As Town Mayor and as cabinet portfolio holder for the arts, I am delighted to see Rother working in partnership with South East Arts on this with sponsorship from Sedlescombe Vineyard."

Park Life continues until October. Martin Ryan says: "I am pleased with it. I would like to do something in the park on a more permanent basis."