Chris Booth was born in Kerikeri, New Zealand in 1948. His sculpture is associated with the land, earth forms, and indigenous peoples of the region(s) he has worked in. He studied at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and went on to study  with Dame Barbara Hepworth and work with  Denis Mitchell, and John Milne in England and Quinto Ghermandi in Italy. Booth has participated in numerous land art projects internationally in Australia, Singapore, UK, Netherlands,  France, Denmark, Italy, Germany, Canada and the Canary Islands.

While Booth’ s sculpture draws upon indigenous Maori and Aborigine characteristics, they remain unique, and capture aspects of topography, natural history, and landscape forms already extant in the places he works. He categorizes these works as Slabs, Earth Blankets, Boulder works, Living Sculptures  and Columns. The commissions have included Hamilton Gardens (done in collaboration with Digger Te Kanawa  (2004-2005) Whangarei Millennium Sculpture (done in collaboration with Te Warihi Hetaraka (2003-2006), at Lincoln University (1997) and the Auckland Art Gallery (1990)  in New Zealand and sites in Australia (Evandale Sculpture Walk, the Mildura Arts Centre)  and Warrnambool ( Deakin University), Germany (Steinbergen), Holland (Krö  Museum), the United Kingdom (Grizedale, London and  Millfield) and Canada (Royal Botanical Gardens and Van Dusen Gardens).

Chris Booth works closely with the land, earth forms, and indigenous peoples of the region(s) where he creates his monumental sculptural art works. His way of working emphasizes communication and exchange between indigenous and colonial cultures and the creation of meaningful environmental art works.

John K Grande with Chris Booth. Vancouver Van Dusen.

John K Grande: Can you tell me about Echo Van de Veluwe (2003-2006) an outdoor piece commissioned by the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo in 2006…

Chris Booth: Echo Van de Veluwe (2003-2006) at the Kröller-Müller Museum (KMM)  in Otterlo, the Netherlands, came as a result of intensive research into the geomorphologic and social history of the local environment. I used 310 erratic granite boulders from the surrounding area. From the outset through to completion, the process included the people who live in the nearby villages, the eldest of whom  was 98. This wise man, Peet Bronz bound the work and the work team to the land and its forebears throughout the process. The idea in the end, was mine but to arrive at this final point involved constant collaboration. Beet Bronz named the work, Echo van de Veluwe.

JKG: There is a relation between the natural structure of the landscape and the sculptural structures you create…

Strata (2001) in downtown Melbourne is another example. The stratified structure of the sculpture reflects how the stone occurs hidden beneath the concrete of downtown Melbourne. On another level Strata involves the actual sewing together of the individual slabs of stone using stainless steel cable, something that parallels the way aboriginal people sewed their possum skin cloaks with kangaroo tail sinews. This led to my commissioning Kirrae Whurrong  artist Fiona Clarke to carve the petroglyph on one of the panels as did her ancestors incise similar patterns on the inside of the possum skin cloak panels. The work thus became relevant to the land and the specific culture.

Wurrungwuri, 2008-2010; Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney, Australia; stone, steel; 400cm x 2200cm x 1900cm (Photo Richard Drew).

JKG:   Wurrungwuri – This Side of the Water (2008-2010), at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney has two elements one like a massive wave of sandstone slabs attached, and the other a blanket of 16000 quartz pebbles with an aboriginal motif… there is a kind of weaving happening, both with the strata in one, and the stone blanket in the other… is this an effort to connect contemporary art with ancestry and tradition?

Wurrungwuri, 2008-2010; Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney, Australia; stone, steel; 400cm x 2200cm x 1900cm (Photo Richard Drew).

CB: I see the quartz pebble woven element with Gadigal aboriginal motif being the flower to the cascading interwoven stone waves. An intercultural and intergenerational bloom of ancient origin.

JKG: How did nac̓θətəɬp Transformation Plant, a work you made in Canada come into being?

CB: Weeks before departing for Vancouver to undertake the project, I felt it necessary to try to make meaningful contact with the Musqueam Indian Band leader and cultural advisor, Leona Sparrow, of Vancouver, sending her my book Woven Stone.  This led, soon after arriving Musqueam Nation Treaty, Language and Culture representatives, Dianne Sparrow, Larissa Grant and Jason Woolman, who generously came to meet me and support my project to completion.

 JKG: And you recycled unused sea wall stones from near Stanley Park as part of the installation. Where did you find them?

CB: It is an incredible thing. I asked Harry Jongerden, the Van Dusen Director to  help  find some  stones. Upon enquiry, Vancouver Parks Department came back positively – “Yes. We have a pile at Stanley Point   all covered up among the brambles.” After we cleared the brambles we found some magnificent granite stone slabs!

JKG: They look like they were made for the piece.

CB:  It is almost as though everything was meant to come together.

JKG: Can you tell me about the exchange with the Musqueam Band?

CB:   Musqueam Nation Treaty, Language and Culture representatives, Dianne Sparrow, Larissa Grant and Jason Woolman approved the site, the idea and offered that they would   have a person come to bless the piece   for the ceremony inaugurating the sculpture. I felt truly humbled.  It was fantastic.

JKG: The Musqueam people have lived for thousands of years in the territory that is now Vancouver and surrounding areas. The name Musqueam relates back to the River Grass and the story that passed on of the People of the River Grass goes this way. “It was noted that in some periods the grass flourished, and in some periods it could hardly be found. In some periods the Musqueum people would flourish and in other eras the population would dwindle due to plagues or war. This was how the Musqueam people got their name… Chris, you consider the forest undergrowth and forest ecology to be an important part of the whole process with your Van Dusen sculpture, don’t you?

CB: Mature trees interacted within and around my site.  Mycorrhizae and mycelia are under the ground in all healthy forests and gardens, in fact everywhere there is a network of mycorrhizae  and mycelia. They throw up fruiting bodies that is fungus some of which we can eat. Right where we are now under all of this is this network of living matter. Only because of them these trees are so healthy because they have a symbiotic relationship. Fungi break down minerals to feed the tree and the tree feeds them. Of course, fungi is the biggest organism on the planet and the greatest recycler on the planet.

JKG: So Transformation Plant is an evolutive, ever changing structure on what was once First Nation  land. It is a slow, time-release piece that will change as the tree grows, the surrounding wood decomposes, and so on …

CB: Absolutely. We tightly packed the entire  sculpture with cut-up prunings from the City Council in order to support the circular arrangement of granite  slabs. It is like a rosette of petals in an opening flower. Then we made a nest right in the centre. The nest is a beautiful thing of organic matter which was carefully laid within the twigs and branches. The humus and earth providing the nutrients for the planting of a tree. Musqueam elders advised that the small juvenile tree to be planted should be their highly revered tree, the western red cedar.  Over the years all the stacked prunings will be consumed by fungi, causing the stone slabs to slowly open up like a flower and the tree to flourish into a full grown tree.

Te Haa o te Ao, 2022-2024; Kerikeri, New Zealand; stone, steel, bronze, aluminium; 1500cm x 700cm x 700cm (Photo Anne-Marie Booth).

JKG: When one thinks about formal botanical gardens one thinks of formal sculpture. They are kind of symbiotic in a way. And with your Vancouver piece we have a de-formalizing of the formal sculpture and the classic idea of a garden.

CB: The spirit of the land comes through. In many ways this sort of sculpture is more relevant to a botanical garden. Lets face it, the people who run botanical gardens know how important fungi is, and also how dangerous it can be, of course.

JKG: Your approach sculpture as ongoing process, a kind of story where the physics and ecology of evolution and devolution override the object.

CB: Yes. It weaves in a complex way between all sorts of different aspects of a place, from spiritual, through to weaving within a community.  I believe the gardens in Vancouver are very keen to involve the Musquem people because there has been so little contact. And the other part of the complex weaving can be brought right through from nature’s processes to contemporary art.

JKG: Your art is so far from consecrating the commodity or whatever the object might be. Here we have the consecration of ecological and permacultural value, and the contribution of ecological processes to our lives…

CB: nac̓θətəɬp “Transformation Plant” is a collaboration with nature and community – living earth art. We are consecrating Gaia here.

JKG: And there was a consecration ceremony…

CB: Yes, on August 2, 2012. Larry Grant, an elder of the tribe, welcomed those that attended in h-un-q-uh-mi-n-uhm (Musqueam language) and in English. He touched on Musqueam history describing how the great transformer changed their supernatural first ancestors who descended from the sky, wrapped in clouds, into their present form as rocks, animals and features of the landscape that remain to this day. Musqueam thus do not simply belong to the land, the river, the living creatures here; they are those places and beings. The blessing followed. Wafting a sprig of western red cedar about her and  over the work, Thelma Stogan, shaman – in a semi trance, chanted in h-un-q-uh-mi-n-uhm – starting to the east, she turned several times and honoured each point – east, north, west, south…. again east. Finally she entered among the leaning slabs and the stacked wood to gently waft the sprig over the now revered juvenile western red cedar. She ‘blessed’ the total presence according to Musqueam traditions. A quiet silence  prevailed over the place and all who witnessed the ceremony.

JKG: A great exchange. You gifted the work to the Musqueum band, and after their consecration of the land, they subsequently  gifted the work  back to Van Dusen Gardens. Though the ceremony was symbolic,  the land is part of a living culture, an ever changing place. Our ancestors were not so different, though traditions have been submerged, forgotten by other forces.

JKG: Did Barbara Hepworth, with whom you  studied in the UK and whose Family of Man (1970), a bronze in nine parts now at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. influence your approach to sculpture?

CB: As a young man, Barbara empowered my fledgling spirit of humanity, she reinforced it. Explaining she firmly believed that  first and foremost as an artist one should be a good human being.

JKG:  Family of Man is like a visionary prototype for environmental sculpture and not recognized in that way back then, but now it is.

CB: Absolutely, standing in the landscape. However, as powerful as Family of Man  is, the influences actually came from much more primal sources:  the Bay of Islands in the very far north of northern New Zealand, the land where I was brought up .  My parents were organic orchardists, and my dad started an organic orchard in the 1930s. His interest was less  commercial more  philosophical .  He thought ‘My God it is ridiculous spraying  beneficial  insects’  He knew of some of Rudolph Steiner’s writings, and it was enough to reinforce my father’s views. Some of that came through.

JKG: We know so little about traditional Amerindian culture, and how evolved it was. The historians certainly got it wrong!

CB: You can almost use that as an excuse. When the Europeans came, there had been thousands of years of highly evolved culture. That movement had been recorded in their own way.

JKG: Willoughby Sharp’s Earth Art show at Cornell in 1969 brought visibility to Land Art and now we have Earth Art, Eco-Art, and Bio-Art – completely new manifestations and approaches to our reconnecting with the earth.

And at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ontario, you produced a work using natural and vegetal matter that was absolutely not about sculpture as being an object, more a work that symbolized the transformation of an aesthetic in our times… towards entropy, ecological systems…. It’s so of our times, and cannot be quantified as art.

CB: Exactly, maybe along the lines of those most ancient of rock shelter artists of all cultures, honouring/celebrating/revering/mythologizing the ecology that sustained existence. Instead of portraying animals and mythological creatures, ‘earth reeds sticks string fungi’ honours/celebrates/reveres/mythologizes the organisms responsible for the breakdown and return to life of dead matter. Instead of a ’sacred’ rock shelter I choose as my ‘canvas’ a ’sacred’ earth site. The word ’sacred’ here meaning a place of particular importance to me that emanates the spirit of life/earth due to a unique (to me) mix of the geomorphology, soil type, indigenous flora and fauna.

The structure and life/death/life process of the piece was inspired by and emulates sympodial growth (putting it simply, this is a zig zag pattern of growth) of the nearby (and somewhat threatened) Sassafras tree. As the installation begins to return to the ground, a feather-like pattern of sticks that celebrates sympodial growth and the work of fungus – the greatest recycler on the planet – remains.

Tauranga Kōtuku, 2017; Kauri Cliffs, Northland, New Zealand; stone, steel; 400cm x 1000cm x 400cm (Photo Chris Pegman).

JKG: Can you tell me something of your most recent piece on Waiheke Island?

CB:   Connells Bay Sculpture Park on Waiheke Island is the first place in New Zealand to embrace my living sculptures.

Waiheke Island, in the Hauraki Gulf off Auckland, NZ, is famous for its white wines and olive oils. As you know fungi is vital to the wine makers. I love to collaborate with fungi too. In October 2016 a call went out to all the island’s grape growers asking for pruned off vines and trunks. About twenty cubic metres were donated and delivered to my site on a headland above the sea. A fungi-like spire, nine metres tall, was created.  The material is interwoven around a central and unseen recycled local timber pole – a system reminiscent of the old way of stacking hay. The tall spire is made purely from gnarly grape trunk material.  Now a home for fungi, the grape vine material and pole will over many many years be consumed by this greatest of recyclers….and returned to the earth. In turn sustaining, at its base, a newly planted edible grape vine.

This sculpture will exist for many generations. The new owner, Connells Bay Sculpture Park, has been encouraged  to top it up every 10 years, and for them to pass on this ritual to their children too….and so on…. One day it could be surrounded by beautiful fertile soil with thriving gardens – all thanks to the recycling of the vines by fungi.

Limestone Acacia, 2016; Nádasdladány Castle, Hungary; stone, wood; 130cm x 600cm x 600cm (Photo unknown).

JKG:  Limestone Acacia  (2016), a piece created on site for the Small Gestures show at the Mucsarnok/Kunsthalle in Budapest that I curated comprised four huge stones and sections of cut wood…  After the show it went to the permanent sculpture collection at Nádasdladány – Nadasdy Castle.  Is there an aesthetic in your integrative action sculpture… Is the mushroom action   part of the art?

CB: Yes.   Limestone Acacia  acknowledges the farmers of the Great Hungarian Plain.  I classify works like these as my kinetic ‘living sculpture’ aesthetic. With its series of radiating stone slabs retrieved from a nearby quarry  that resemble the radiating gills of a fungi mushroom, plus  sections of tree branches that will eventually be consumed by mushroom growth (micorrhiza and mycelia) the stones  will move, ever so slowly. As the wood rots the stones lower  towards the earth to join together at the centre and radiate on the ground like the gills of a fungi.

Kinetic Fungi Tower, 2017; Waiheke Island, New Zealand; grapevine trunks and recycled pole; 900cm x 120cm (Photo Chris Booth).

JKG: The piece you made for the Small Gestures show at the Kunsthalle in Budapest is a model for ever-changing sculpture, a slow motion kinetic and 3-dimensional drawing. With the help of micorrhiza and mycelia (mushroom) as co-artists the sculpture will gradually lower in height.

CB: Yes, we agree that , fungi is  the greatest recycler on the planet

Te Rā, 2023; Taipa, New Zealand; stone, wood; 400cm x 1000cm x 170cm.

JKG: And your more recent Te Rā, 2023 sun sculpture. How did it come into being… Did the sculpture evolve after familiarizing with the place?

CB: Te Rā came into being following numerous visits to the coastal farm, covering the seasons through the day and into the late evenings. The impact of the ever-changing effects of the rising and falling of the sun onto this particular ridge site was infinitely powerful. This led me to research availability of large stone slabs from a nearby quarry, recording the exact shape of a selection of stones.  I made a bamboo full scale lineal mock up to ensure the positioning on the proposed site was correct according to the movements of the sun. This evolution of the vision for the work was openly shared with my clients. And so the project began. On the day of the first rising of Matariki (Pleiades) on the 29th of June 2024, the sculpture was blessed in a whakanoa ceremony conducted by Hone Bassett, Tohunga of Ngāti Tara hapū of Ngāti Kahu. In this ceremony it was named Te Rā, in celebration of the rising and setting of the sun.

Te Rā, 2023; Taipa, New Zealand; stone, wood; 400cm x 1000cm x 170cm.

JKG: Your cross-over intercultural approach to sculpture is such a relief, given the inbred historical and cultural obstacles to clear culture and nature exchange and communication.

CB: Having spent most of my 7.6 decades living closely and as harmoniously as I can within Aotearoa New Zealand nature and with Maori culture, I believe I have been infused with aspects of the essence or spirit of these. It has seeped into every part of my being. Therefore, to answer your question, I see/feel the sun, moon, planets and stars from a uniquely Aotearoa New Zealand perspective, as well as being universal. The following (humbling) quote from a 1986 Auckland Art Gallery catalogue, Aspects of Recent NZ Art, endorses this: “In a recent interview discussing Pakeha [European origin] response to and use of Maori materials in art, Ngahuia te Awekotuku spoke of taking some relatives to see Chris Booth’s Forest Proverbs. She commented: “I take great care in saying this as a Maori woman … Chris Booth’s work has an integrity and understanding of the land – as his land; of space – as his space – which makes it indigenous.”

JKG: Can you tell me of any new projects coming up?

CB: The most meaningful new project for this year is  a large land art work which celebrates a place called Hikulagi on the Pacific Island of Niue. The name Hikulagi can be interpreted as the reaching up of mother earth to father sky. Here I’m recycling a satellite dish, inverting it to form a small hill -like shape, elevating it about 60cm on poles then covering it with about 1200 blocks of coral stone from a nearby quarry (Niue consists of coral limestone). The stone will be laid in a particular pattern as directed by collaborating women weavers, Enele Kaiuha and Ahitautama Cross, from the adjacent village. The inverted satellite dish can still be viewed by looking up from underneath….

JKG: Chris you are one of the most integrative intercultural sculptors I have ever encountered. Thanks so much for your gifts to all of us.

CB: Thanks John. To have a relationship with the land itself and the Indigenous cultures is paramount in the creation of these sculptures. Probably most accumulations of stone (including pilings) by human beings could be termed markers of some sort (boundaries, high points, gathering points, gateways, trails, Memorials, spiritual places, etc). The diversity of purpose for these markers is a way for sculpture to move forward in these challenging times.

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