Digging a hole in the ground is a practical task. For millennia humans have dug holes for many reasons: to drain water from land; to lay foundations; to plant food supplies; deal with waste; make storage space, and to create space for tombs and graves.
In June 2002 during a residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC), Dunhill and O’Brien posted a small ad in the Brabants Dagblad newspaper offering to dig holes for free. Five residents from the s’Hertogenbosch area invited them to their gardens, farms and allotments seeking holes for various purposes.
Each time Dunhill and O’Brien dug a hole they cast it in plaster. This resulted in a collection of inverted plaster objects documenting the impressions of their labour. Moulds were made of the resulting abstract sculptural forms and these were cast to become a group of large-scale ceramic sculptures made using locally sourced clay.
This artwork, HOLES II, was later transported to the UK where it was exhibited a few times before going into storage. In 2022 they were invited to temporarily site the work at the Grange in Norfolk, while they formed an intention to finally return the large multi part sculpture to the earth.
Fortunately, the owners of the Grange enjoyed the idea of taking ownership of a sculpture that remained out of sight, and contracts were drawn up to set out both the terms of ownership (i.e. that the artwork should remain buried for at least fifteen years) and the rights of the artists to a burial plot for the same duration.
A commemorative plaque and wildflower planting can be visited at the site of the burial at the Grange. The ‘what 3 words’ location is: //bucket.tomb.shook
The commemorative booklet produced following the burial in July 2024 is available as a digital flipbook below.
NB. there were in fact two artworks resulting from the hole digging project in s’Hertogenbosch the other work, HOLES I, is documented here.