Page 18 - LandscapeSA Issue 106

fEATURE

emerson installation by Thomas Linders and indoor flowform artist impression by Jaco Howard
fLOWfORM WATER ScULPTURES

BY LIESL HAASBROEK

With any part of your body, make a slow figure of As the water flows through the form, it pulses
eight for just a few moments – make the eight a bit in a figure eight shape with all the benefits
that rhythmical movement brings to water.
bigger and slow it down even more. Can you feel Rhythm occurs naturally between polar
qualities like the rising and falling of the
the subtle energy of this shape? Can you sense the tides, flapping wings that move upwards and
downwards, your heartbeat and breathing, a
momentum, the centrifugal force that swings beyond child on a swing.
the movement? This is the pulse and the rhythm that Just like gravity, the flowform method was
a flowform water sculpture creates as water flows discovered, not invented. John Wilkes was
a sculptor who studied metamorphosis
within its form. and became curious about symmetry
in the context of water quality. Through
meticulous experimentation, the flowform
landscaper designs visible features of of clay and the flow of an open hosepipe. method was realised in April 1970. The
an area of land and considers options The moving water will shape the malleable technology of a flowform is actually the
A terms of function and aesthetic clay just as the beach is shaped by waves. shape and the surface of the form and
in
appeal. It seems obvious to me that a water Add the artistic sculpting by human hands, the result is the impact that this specific
scaper would create a river in the built engineering, make a mould followed by the movement has on water health. When
environment. What is a river and how would cast. Thus, a flowform is born: a water feature one thinks of healthy water, most people
one go about ‘building’ one? In its most basic shaped by water. would not conjure up the image of a
form, a river is about a relationship between stagnant pool. Movement is a logical and
the water and the river bed. The health of Not only is the clay and thus the ultimate instinctual aspect of the vitality of water
the water and the shape of the river bed are shape of the flowform created by the flowing and not simply water moving in pipes,
inextricably linked in nature and the bond water, the sound of the water flowing but rather naturally flowing water that
between the two is found in movement. through the flowform is also shaped in this folds in on itself repeatedly, where oxygen
way. Therefore a flowform resembles a river becomes absorbed and dissolved into the
Imagine the relationship between a block both in its movement and its sound. body of water.

16 Landscape SA • Issue 106 2021