Will Gould & Emily Hill

The Jakes marks the first in a series of collaborative projects between gardener, artist and educator, Will Gould, and artist, and prop stylist, Emily Hill. Combining their practice the pair create ‘living sculpture’. Their work reminds us of our interconnection with the environment and with each other, and aims to “walk a line between the man-made and the wild”.

The Jakes is one of many euphemisms for lavatory, it forms the title of an installation based around a simple compost toilet. A commode sits inside a shed-like structure, and old copper pipes expose the journey of our body’s waste back into the soil. Plants growing on the roof of the structure are fed by these ‘recycled arteries’, and a Victorian cloche built into the roof reveals the plants through its rusty metal and missing panes of glass. At the rear of The Jakes are two containers, one filled with compost, the other, a reed bed.

The possibility of a ‘greener’ future and the notion of an idyllic rural past places the work in a historically ambiguous context. Sustainable systems of waste disposal that were previously used have been replaced in the push to streamline and sanitise our lives, but The Jakes salutes a return to basics. What is explored is the means in which the physical body interacts with the environment, and how we may ‘recycle ourselves’.

Everything about this is recycled; everything has a history and a story to tell. This is a ‘friendly’ exchange between humankind and nature.


Will Gould and Emily Hill are creating this new work for Margate Rocks 08.

_{Images: Will Gould and Emily Hill, The Jakes, 2008. Photography © Simon Welsford}