Complex Systems is a participatory public artwork exploring how complex forms emerge from simple individual actions. Rather than beginning with a predetermined sculpture, the project starts with a single woven unit. Each participant contributes one willow ring, creating an individual element within a much larger system. As these rings accumulate and become interconnected, new patterns, structures and sculptural possibilities emerge that could never be predicted from the individual components alone.
The artwork asks participants to experience complexity through making. By contributing a single action to a collective process, each person becomes part of an artwork whose final form is shaped through collaboration, emergence and the relationships between its many interconnected parts.
Developed in partnership with Park Community School, Complex Systems uses willow harvested directly from the school grounds, transforming locally grown natural materials into a site-specific public artwork. Every stage of the process draws upon the landscape itself, allowing the sculpture to emerge from materials that already belong to the place in which it will eventually stand.
The project begins during the school’s Family Fun Days, where members of the local community are invited to learn a simple willow-weaving technique and contribute their own woven ring. Individually, each ring is modest; collectively, they become the foundation of a much larger sculptural system. Participants are not simply observing the artwork—they are actively constructing the material from which it will grow.
The project is conceived as four interconnected phases:
Phase One – Preparing the System
Willow is harvested, sorted and prepared before participants are introduced to the weaving process.
Individual willow rings are created using simple armatures, establishing approximately 150 woven units that will become the building blocks of the Ring Sheet and ultimately the sculpture.
Phase Two – Building Complexity
The individual rings are interconnected to create a flexible woven surface—a “Ring Sheet”. Working with art and agriculture students from Park Community School, this growing field of interconnected units is explored as a sculptural material, investigating how larger forms can emerge from repeated simple structures.
Phase Three – Public Sculpture
The completed sculptural form will be developed collaboratively with the school and installed within the school grounds as a permanent public artwork. Created from materials grown on site and shaped through collective participation, the sculpture becomes a physical expression of the community that made it.
Phase Four – Observation and Change
The artwork continues beyond installation. Students will be invited to document the sculpture alongside the artist through photography, drawing, drone imagery, painting and observation, recording how weather, seasons and time gradually transform the willow. The sculpture is understood not as a finished object but as an evolving system whose changing form becomes part of the artwork itself.
The Ring Sheet –
A new structural material that can be folded, suspended, draped, tensioned and transformed into many different sculptural expressions.
Community Participation
The first stage of Complex Systems takes place during the Park Community School Family Fun Days – Connect4Families, held throughout the summer holidays. Families, children, teenagers and local residents are invited to join the project for as little or as long as they wish. Some participants may stay only a few minutes, while others may spend several hours contributing to the work.
No previous experience of willow weaving is expected. Participants are introduced to the project through a series of accessible activities, allowing everyone to contribute according to their interests and confidence. They may choose to:
- prepare and sort the harvested willow
- select suitable willow for weaving
- learn to weave individual rings using prepared armatures
- help connect completed rings into the growing Ring Sheet.
Because every participant brings different skills, interests and levels of experience, the contribution of each person is unique. Some may complete an entire woven ring, others may create only part of one, while some may simply help prepare materials or observe the process. Rather than prescribing individual outcomes, the project creates the conditions for collaboration to emerge naturally.
This open-ended approach reflects the central idea behind Complex Systems: a complex whole does not depend upon identical contributions, but emerges through the accumulation of many different individual actions and interactions.
Embracing Uncertainty
The project deliberately leaves many of its most important variables unknown. Who will participate? How many people will arrive? What ages, experiences and interests will they bring? Will they stay for five minutes or four hours? Will they prepare materials, weave a single ring, or help build the Ring Sheet? These questions remain unanswered until the project unfolds. Rather than treating this uncertainty as a problem to be managed, Complex Systems treats it as part of the artwork itself. The sculpture develops through countless individual choices and interactions, allowing its form and meaning to emerge from participation rather than prescription.
Complex Systems has been developed in collaboration with Park Community School, Connect4Families and is supported through the Connect for Communities programme, Best Start in Life, Hampshire County Council, and the Department for Education. Their support has enabled local families, students and artists to work together in creating a shared public artwork that grows directly from the landscape and community in which it belongs.
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