Published: Friday, 3rd September, 2010 12:00pm

New artist in residence at Boora

A pioneer of environmental art and a representative of the European development of Land Art or Art in Nature is the latest artist in residence at Lough Boora's Sculpture in the Parklands.

Alfio Bonanno is a site-specific, outdoor installation artist who has been creating large-scale sculptures within selected, natural environments for the past 35 years. Since the late 1970s he has worked in many countries with and in natural and urban landscapes with site specific projects both with large structures of natures own materials and with conceptual acts.

He will work in Boora from September 6 to 25.

In 1985, his Sound Year Installation at the Miró Museum in Barcelona, Spain, a collaboration with Danish composer Gunner Møller Pedersen, was seen as a breakthrough in environmental art. It was on his initiative and with him as chairman that TICKON, Tranekær International Center for Art and Nature was created on the Danish Island of Langeland in 1990. In 2004 he created Himmelhøj, a sculpture landscape containing four major site specific works commissioned by the Danish Minestry of the Environment and sited at Vestamager, Denmark.

In 2008, Alfio Bonanno represented Denmark at the International Sculpture Biennial, SCULPTUR NATURE, Aglié (Torino), Italy.

In 2009, he created the CO2 CUBE Project, Sct.Jørgens Lake, Copenhagen.

As Bonanno said: "The 'other landscape' exists at a closer look-here-where we have always been, where we least expect to find it - there it is. Where earth meets air, and water meets the sun, we see myriads of vital life cycles. And life arises, where it is given a chance to exist: on the cracked boards of a train wagon in movement, in the midst of a concrete footpath, and on roof tops."

Alfio Bonanno's residency has been funded by EU Culture and Education programme Trans Form Actions, Bord na Mona, University College Dublin, Lough Boora Parklands Group and Sculpture in the Parklands.