Martin Boyce

(UK) *1967 in Hamilton, Scotland

The sculpture “Warm Dry Stone and Palm Leaves” by Martin Boyce appears to consist of everyday objects: three bench-like forms are erected vertically and joined together to form a kind of screen; hanging from it – as if carelessly left behind – is a yellow garden hose. Boyce draws on his characteristic vocabulary of forms here: he developed the geometric pattern in the ‘benches’ from his preoccupation with icons of modern design. The title of the work is borrowed from his own description of an abandoned zoo: “Warm dry stone and palm leaves, No elephants, No giraffes, No penguins, No brilliantly coloured birds...”. The work thus evokes a place that has long since disappeared or perhaps never existed. It is exemplary of Boyce’s long-term interest in the history of form and design in our environment and in the transformation of everyday spaces. Time and again he creates places between memory and fiction, in which design history, personal narratives and urban relics poetically intertwine.
Martin Boyce studied at the Glasgow School of Art and the California Institute of the Arts. He represented Scotland at the 2009 Venice Biennale, was awarded the Turner Prize in 2011 and holds a professorship at the HFBK Hamburg.