Luna’s Café

Laura Ellen Bacon is artist in residence at Compton Verney, and is creating a wonderful white tape cocoon among the interstices of some trees in the Capability Brown park. The work seems quite different from the woven forms she has previously produced: there is no inherent strength in the material, so the smooth inner compartment (an implied shell or nest?) is literally held in place by the tension of a multitude of tied lengths of tape, using the trees as anchoring points.

Starting off as straight lines, they are tensioned into curves by further attached strips in a way that is not dissimilar to the use of control points on bezier curves in type design. This results in a certain randomness from the outside, as the smooth internal effect is most clearly seen when you actually enter the structure – it’s big enough for two people to stand in comfortably. The work will last a season – perhaps more? Today it was the home of a young robin and a mouse (who did not stay around to be photographed).

More images here.