Andy Goldsworthy’s Ephemeral Refuges

In 2008, British artist Andy Goldsworthy came to La Petite Escalère along with his team of Scottish masons to install Refuges. The three rectangular slate trunks encasing three tree branches symbolize the collector, the painter and the gardener who created this exceptional private garden located in the southwest of France.

A few years after its installation, Andy Goldsworthy came back to photograph the work transformed by nature. To his great delight, he discovered that the first tree was wrapped with a fluorescent moss, as though lit up from within. The second one was covered with fungi and the third one had been nibbled on by insects. Transformation will end up making them disappear all together.

Andy Goldsworthy took pictures of them to keep a memory of these ephemeral pieces.

« It’s beautiful. It makes you try to come to term with loss and change and memory ».