Artist Onya McCausland is creating a new temporary work for the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail. Part of an exhibition called Charcoal Works, Charcoal Measure is a line of charcoal on the forest path that draws attention to the scale of the underground coal excavations, below the surface. The work may be viewed on the Trail from Tuesday, March 15th.

Charcoal Works is an exhibition of commissioned artworks that have been produced with the charcoaled remains of the iconic oak sculpture ‘Place’, that stood on the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail for 29 years.

Affectionately known as The Giant’s Chair, the sculpture was installed in 1986 and was decommissioned in late 2015.

In October 2015 a charcoal ‘clamp’ was built on the same spot in the forest where the oak sculpture had stood. For three days and two nights, beneath a huge earth covered mound, an intense heat steamed, smoked and slowly carbonised the wood.

Onya has invited 18 artists to produce new work from the charcoal which was created. Charcoal Works will be accompanied by a symposium, Deep Material Encounters, to be held at Clearwell Caves in the Forest of Dean, one of the country’s oldest iron ore mines, on Friday April 15th. The symposium brings together researchers and artists from across the arts and sciences to discuss ways that knowledge is developed, and perceptions altered, through encounters with particular materials, in the context of current ecological conditions.

Charcoal Works will be open at the Hardwick Gallery at the University of Gloucestershire between April 6th and 22nd.