Kew, 'Jumping' with Sculptures

Goslar Warrior

You wait and you wait for a trip to the Capital, 20 years to be precise, then two come along at once. We're country bumpkins you see, anything bigger than Nottingham is quite the scary proposition for us, particularly given that London doesn't seem to be one of our lucky places. Mrs Fed Kandi was in London when terrorists bombed the Underground in 2005, and my limited experience of the city in recent years has been regular trips to St Pancras and back when I've ended up on the wrong train.

Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae

Our recent trip to the Royal Albert Hall for the Ballet was no different, coinciding as it did with a serious rail crash on our local mainline to London, and an unprecedented heatwave that practically closed the English rail network. As it happens, and despite all these problems, we had a jolly fine day out in Kensington, which went a long way to allaying our fears for a much-anticipated excursion south of the river to Richmond.

I've never been to Kew Gardens, and if I'm absolutely honest it's not somewhere I've ever felt drawn to. In fact my feelings on the matter is that it's a long way to go to look around a garden. We've got one of those at home, and there are some quite impressive ones nearby should the need arise. However, none of these options are currently playing host to the largest ever exhibition of outdoor artworks by one of our favourite artists and sculptors, Henry Moore.

Sheep Piece

The Henry Moore: Monumental Nature exhibition at Kew Gardens has been on our to-do list for most of the year. We were merely waiting for the inevitable rush to die down, and of course the weather to ease off a little, which it finally did in August. Mrs Fed Kandi does like a garden of course, albeit one less brown and crispy than it was on this occasion, and we both love a good sculpture, in fact we both have something of a history with Henry Moore.

Of all the monumental bronzes on show at Kew, Oval with Points (right) was the one we most wanted to track down. It was this very sculpture that at one time sat on the lawn in front of the Fielding Johnson Building at Leicester University. In fact the very same casting by Morris Singer that myself and friends would non-reverentially lounge on when attending Rock Discos at the nearby Students Union building. Mrs Fed Kandi remembers it too from when she worked at the University, neither of us had seen it since it was controversially reclaimed by the Henry Moore Foundation in the mid-80's. Needless to say we weren't allowed to lounge on it this time.

Much as I wanted to travel as light as possible on the day, a photographic opportunity of this magnitude demanded the very heaviest Soviet camera, and with the finest lens that my money had recently bought for a tenner. So I loaded up the Zorki 4K with a roll of Kodak Gold 200, and packed a spare too because this wasn't a day for eking out the exposures.

Double Oval

Large Interior Form

I'd already shot a test roll through the Zorki so I knew it could deliver the image quality I was after, but this would be the first opportunity to really test the Jupiter 8 lens on what would prove to be a gloriously sunny day. I didn't want to just record the sculptures though, I was aiming to 'photograph' them, show them in as interesting a way as possible, ideally with a bit of context. Opportunities to play around with Depth of Field were necessarily limited by the bright midday light, which meant that even at the Zorki's top Shutter Speeds the Aperture needed screwing down a fair bit. A late afternoon or early morning would have been a better choice, but needs must!

What of the actual exhibition itself? Well if I'm being really picky... perhaps too many Henry Moore's! Much as I love these sculptures, half a dozen statement pieces is probably enough for me. I think the experience would have worked better with a bit more variety on show, perhaps a few Barbara Hepworth's dotted about, the odd Jacob Epstein or Antony Gormley in the mix, perhaps even something new. For me this was a case of less would be more, although I'd have to say the exhibition of works in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art by Moore was worth the admission price alone. Henry Moore: Monumental Nature continues until the 31st January next year, and will of course be a much different experience should we get a proper cold Winter to cloak the landscape. I'd very much like to see photographs of these sculptures in the frost or snow...