Eign Gate Underpass - Graphic Rewilding
Forever Flowers (Shifting Borders)
As an artistic counterbalance to the severe lack of green space in cities, Lee Baker and Catherine Borowski co-founded Graphic Rewilding to create vast, nature-inspired, and attention-grabbing public art in often overlooked and unexpected spaces.
Copyright Graphic Rewilding
Graphic Rewilding wants to inspire people to connect and empathise a little more with the natural world: "We've done quite a few studies into the power of natural imagery in urban environments and the effect it has on people's minds and quality of life, and the evidence overwhelmingly shows that not only nature, but images of nature, can significantly improve people's mental health."
Their large-scale commission is sited in Eign Gate underpass, an important and heavily-used pedestrian route into the city centre: "We were really excited to get our hands on the underpass, but it was a really hard environment to work in. It's damp, a bit grotty, it's cold and massive in scale. But once we got our head around all the challenges, we just couldn't wait to get started."
Graphic Rewilding selected a range of native plants, flowers and insects to include in the artwork including snake's head fritillary, green-winged orchid, sea campion, yellow jacket iris, foxglove, daisies, emperor dragonfly and white tailed bumblebees.
The piece transforms the Eign Gate underpass, bringing some vibrancy, fun and colour to the city and shrinking the public to the size of an insect to see things from their perspective.
"This has been our most original artwork. It included some really beautiful flowers that we had never even seen before, let alone featured. The impact of all the artwork has been immediate. What we find with our work is that, when people pass it on their way into work or school, they then start to notice nature more around them and it starts to become a real conversation point."
The artwork is no. 6 on the Hereford Public Art Trail.