Meciendo el Viento

• Feathers
• Installation
• International

'Meciendo el Viento' is 10 metres long and made of dyed feathers, rope and copper tubing. Clare created it while in Mexico City for 4 months with a travel award from Southern Arts in 1994. The British Council in Mexico arranged for Clare to exhibit the piece in the pinetum in the Botanic Gardens in Mexico City.

The feathers are stitched together to create the hammock but they are so delicate that from many viewpoints the piece seems transparent. Few environmental artists had worked in Mexico then so it was an opportunity to introduce a different approach creating an ephemeral sculpture using natural materials and sited out of the galleries and squares. The hammock shape reflected a functional Mexican product rendered useless but still beautiful by the change of materials and scale. Feathers could be used outdoors because, unlike in the UK, it did not rain so they kept their shape.