Kerry Lemon is inspired by travel and responds to local plant life, landscape and histories. She loves materials and articulates her research in a multidisciplinary practice including sculpture, painting, drawing and collage. Her artwork and ideas are commissioned by architects, developers and luxury brands.
Find out more on the Kerry Lemon website.
Kerry was commissioned by Bracknell Forest Council to create a permanent artwork for Peacock Meadows, Jennett’s Park.
This was to be provided for the enjoyment of the local community. It was funded by the developers as part of their planning obligation to provide public art works across the new residential area of Jennett’s Park.
There was a competitive design tender for the artworks, followed by a public consultation on the shortlisted proposals.
Kerry was inspired by the skylark birds found on the site and designed a complementary pair of sculptures to celebrate the local ecology.
Melody Rocket reflects the skylarks during their solitary period between November and February. The sculpture was named through a local primary schools competition.
The piece with multiple birds reflects the family breeding season between March and October.
The sculptures have been designed to reflect the many skylarks that live at Peacock Meadows.
Skylarks are renowned for their song and vertical display flight, and have inspired writers and artists including Chaucer, Shelley and Vaughan Williams.
Its recent and dramatic population declines make it a Red List species. We are very lucky to have such increasingly rare and endangered birds on our doorstep.
Skylarks nest on the ground. Please stay on the paths and keep dogs on leads during their breeding season, between March and September.
Find out more about skylarks on the RSPB website.
Kerry Lemon has been working with the Bat Conservation Trust to provide bat-friendly features in the new artwork at Peacock Meadows.
Bats are internationally important and they are a protected species here in the UK. Bats are ‘indicator species’, as they are top predators of nocturnal insects and are sensitive to changes in land use practices. This makes bats excellent gauges of the wider health of the UK's wildlife.
There are simple, small interventions that can be made in gardens and public green spaces to help bats and in turn other urban wildlife. One of these is to provide artificial roosts designed to provide additional living spaces, such as bat boxes. Another is to consider what is being planted and to avoid light pollution.
The bat boxes within the skylark sculpture are designed specifically for crevice dwelling bats, such as common and soprano pipistrelle bats.
For more information visit the Bat Conservation Trust pages about:
Kerry is committed to regenerative sustainability, prioritising robust, long lasting, cradle-to-cradle artwork designed for continuous reuse.
These structures are unpainted so the Corten steel will be 100% recyclable at the end of its life.
Fabricators Littlehampton Welding are equally committed to the green agenda and have implemented an Environmental Management System following the requirements of ISO 14001:2015.
Kerry worked closely with the Jennett’s Park community to test and develop her designs in a series of projects and events.
A month-long residency working with Bracknell Forest Council’s LGBTQ+ youth on a creative and fully circular project.
This project investigated the ecology of Peacock Meadows through a queer lens. We explored the connections between queerness and nature by observing diverse case studies in the site's flora and fauna.
The project culminated in a series of wearable banners and a skylark helmet, which transformed and disguised the participant's identities in a series of photographs and films directed by the participants.
You can view the full project on the Kerry Lemon website.
A presentation by the artists and opportunity to further consult residents of Jennett’s Park, held at the local community centre.
A competition with the schools nearest to Peacock Meadows to choose the name of the skylark featured in the single bird sculpture.
7 year old Dexter from Great Hollands Primary School won with his name:
‘Melody Rocket’
Dexter said he chose the name:
“Melody because of the Skylark's beautiful song and rocket because they fly like rockets.”
Feedback from the nature connectedness research group at Derby University.
The work offers strong visual engagement.
The silhouettes highlight the shape of skylarks in movement-in-a-moment, which offers unique visual experience.
When standing near to it, viewers will need to look up, which offers a new visual field and perspective to explore, inviting appreciation of sky as well as the sculpture.
Different skyscapes will make for changing visual experiences. There is also a nice parallel with the act of seeing real skylarks – one has to look up.
From a distance, the work creates a point of interest, drawing the eye.
Nest boxes offer additional visual engagement, with potential for watching nesting and feeding behaviours.
Element of an imagined kinaesthetic or proprioceptive sensory experience too – with the skylarks captured in flight, soaring and swooping. There’s a potential to imagine these feelings in the body.
Sculptures may create wonderful shadows as well, for additional visual engagement and interest.
The work is not only something to look at, but somewhere to look from – as a landmark to look out over meadows and trees.
It’s a place to pause and stop. There is potential for people to take a moment to experience the full sensory experience of being in nature – the sounds, smells, feeling of the breeze, and visual details.
The work is playful and awe-inspiring, likely to invoke a sense of wonder, and capturing the sense of joy of skylarks in flight.
Looking up and seeing skylarks against the sky, or even as a distant landmark, helps invoke a sense of space with potential feelings of expansion and openness.
The work itself is aesthetically pleasing and impressive, while also highlighting the beauty of skylarks in flight.
In relation to the new visual fields that engagement with the work offers, looking at the sculpture in context offers opportunities for unique appreciation of the sky, landscape, plants and wildlife.
The work captures multiple meanings, with the sculpture linking to the natural and built environment in which it is located, and to the combined natural and cultural histories.
The 2 sculptures tie to the seasonal cycle of the skylarks. Access to these 2 works will help viewers appreciate the life of the skylark and their changing focus from territory to family.
The community engagement project, exploring connections between queerness and nature is a fantastic example of nature engagement and celebration to explore social, cultural and individual experiences and meanings. Identification of species with links to sexuality, gender identity and fluidity is a powerful and beautiful meaning-making activity. Taking part in this project would probably not only be empowering and fun for the participants, but help them develop closer relationships with nature and greater sense of interconnectedness.
Compassion is reflected in the making of the work through the use of sustainable materials and processes.
Nest boxes offer care for bat species by offering safe spaces for them.
In drawing attention to the nesting habits of skylarks, there’s potential for increased awareness of the risks for ground-nesting birds and more desire to help their successful breeding.
If the pathways to nature connectedness are activated by engagement with the work and surrounding area, there’s potential for this to increase people’s interest in helping nature.
With thanks to: Sculpture Fabrication - Littlehampton Welding, Foundations and groundworks - ROCON, Structural Engineers - Format Engineers, Technical artwork - Josh Mowll, Ecologist - Michael Holland, Textile Artist - Zoe Murphy, Photographer and filmmaker - Emma Brown, Bat Habitats - Greenwood's Ecohabitats, Bat Conservation Trust, Berks & South Bucks Bat Group, Nature Connectedness Research Group Derby University, Brian Clew - Skylark specialist, Project mentees - Jenna Fox, Artemis & Charlie Stafford, Project support - Lila Chatfield, Pansy Peacocks, Jennett’s Park Community Association, Bracknell Forest Council - councillors and officers, Derby University, Public art consultant - The Phoenix Theatre and Arts Centre, Landscape and public arts consultancy - People Place Nature, Developers - Redrow and Persimmon Homes, Landowners - Chartered Accountants Benevolent Association.
