Salt Field No3 by Phillip Hall Patch

Salt Field No3 by Phillip Hall Patch is the inaugural exhibition at Elements Gallery London, a unique urban space and the city’s first dedicated outdoor art gallery, based at Lubomirov / Angus-Hughes.

Taking inspiration from the seasons, and allowing Nature to play a collaborative role, Salt Field No3 is a dramatic dissolving sculpture made of salt. Conceived specifically as an installation of salt blocks, it creates a pristine white canvas upon which the elements impose a transformative, visual narrative of Spring in East London.

Rather than resisting the elements in the way we have come to expect of traditional sculpture, Salt Field No3 challenges this notion and embraces the effects of the sun, rain, wind and city pollution. Continually eroding and crystallizing, the surfaces register different climatic conditions over time, such that no two viewings of the work will be the same.

The salt blocks used for this project are commercially manufactured, formed from mined salt that is refined then compressed under high pressure. The pure, white, marble-like blocks have the density of engineering bricks and a smooth texture that initially contrasts starkly with the urban courtyard space of the gallery. The audience is encouraged to participate and engage with the work as the salt dissolves under the influence of environmental forces, bearing witness to its evolving story through their own observations and photography and creating a dramatic timeline of transformation on social media.

A vital element for life, every cell of the human body contains salt - without it, cells could not obtain nourishment and would die. As a means of food preservation salt has always been linked to our survival and has long been laboriously produced wherever environmental conditions allow, including stretches of the British coastline in Roman times. The word "salary" dates from that epoch, when soldiers were given an allowance to buy salt; its importance and value are also preserved in many other phrases such as "salt of the earth", "worth one's salt", "a pinch of salt" and "below the salt". Its cultural significance is truly ancient - it was used in preserving Egyptian mummies and still plays an important role in many religious and social rituals, symbolizing purity. Salt Field No3 may also be interpreted as a social comment on sustainability, drawing parallels between the erosion of the sculpture and the erosion of the natural and man-made landscape

About the Artist

Phillip Hall Patch is the first artist selected to exhibit at Elements Gallery London. Phillip was a chosen artist for the HOUSE Brighton Festival 2014, along with Yinka Shonibare MBE, and has also exhibited at APT Gallery, London, and Orange County Centre for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. He is Principal Lecturer in Architecture at Brighton University, Senior Consultant Project Leader for Thomas Heatherwick Studio and is also undertaking MA studies in the aesthetic representation of sculpture.

About the Curator Rebecca Feiner is an event organiser, curator and multimedia artist with a successful track record of making art accessible to the public in unusual spaces beyond the traditional gallery setting, including a church belfry, an industrial lift-shaft, bank vaults, a water pumping station, car parks, cemeteries, woodland and warehouses. As part of the 2015 London Festival of Architecture, she animated a neglected 1.5-acre site next to the Olympic stadium for DEN-CITY1, a utopian art city built from the detritus of Hackney Wick and featuring more than 50 artists in a three-day festival, free to the public - see http://www.londonlive.co.uk/news/2015-06-29/den-cityfeatures- work-from-more-than-50-artists Rebecca's work has also featured in international exhibitions from Denmark to the USA, including the Venice Biennale, the Cannes Film Festival and London's Victoria & Albert Museum, where in collaboration with Public Works & R-Urban she created DIY Estates, a fake estate agency as a wry comment on gentrification of east London. Other experience includes lecturing, journalism, frontline work for community organizations and homeless charities (CRISIS, St Mungo's and Single Homeless Project) and broadcasting on art and culture - see https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/the-newsagents- 13th-february-2016/