Awst & Walther
Ground to Sky

The works of the Welsh-German ar­tist cou­ple Awst & Walther are in­flu­enced by the­atre and ar­chi­tec­ture alike. Their ex­pan­sive in­stal­la­tions, rich in me­ta­phor­ical ob­jects and stage-like settings, ex­am­ine ques­tions of human ex­is­tence in terms of social stan­dards of be­haviour and com­mon spaces. Often site-spe­cif­ic, their works create a par­tic­u­lar frame­work of pre­sen­ta­tion through a variety of me­diums.

A floating box­wood hedge in the middle of Sennestadt? Awst & Walther’s “Ground to Sky” (2014) sur­prises both random passersby and vis­i­tors amid the me­an­der­ing foot­path net­work of the Bullerbach area. As sug­gested by the title, viewers see a human-sized box­wood hedge which seems to be taken from the floor and acts as a motif for il­lu­sion­is­tic paint­ing. The in­stal­la­tion refers not only to the im­por­tance of the garden hedge in civil set­tle­ments, but also ad­dresses the inter­play of nature and land­scape as well as the reg­u­la­tion and owner­ship of space in urban areas. In ad­di­tion, an ar­tis­tic symbol of tran­sience has been cre­ated, which is subject to the pass­ing of the sea­sons and, by the end of October, a slow decay.