Horse Sculpture

Horse – Madeline Allison

A joint project with artist Madeline Allison for a town regeneration project in Whitehill - Hampshire. The site for the sculpture, a historic military parade ground built in the early 20th century. It was being redeveloped into a communal outdoor space and surrounded by a square of formal townhouses as part of a large-scale redevelopment of a former military town.

The brief for the sculpture was loose but the concept was to create a tangible reminder of its military history without being directly military in its form, to invite people to interact and feel a connection to the former occupants of the square.

The sculpture that we designed and built took the shape of a horse, a connection to the horses that were so prominent in early 20th-century military history but with a much more positive and regenerative narrative.

Its form was created by combining huge quantities of forged steel bar into branch like ‘growing’ structures that twisted and combined to create the shape of the animal, it was a figurative representative of trees or vines and each leg was a point of growth and regeneration from the ground.
The head of the horse was a change in material and technique and was meant to anchor the body of the sculpture in the present moment with a more literal representation of a horse.

It was important to us that the head and face of the horse really captured the soul of an animal and prompted the unconscious responses between man and horse, the eyes rest at adult eye level and the head of the horse reaches over a fence, again prompting a desire to interact, feel its warm breath, reach out and touch its nose, look into its eyes and feel a connection to the past.

Forged steel – galvanised
Cast bronze
2500mm long x 550mm wide x 1950mm high