David Kemp – Farra Grain – 1982
Material: Wood
Trail: Silurian Way
Theme: Nature
Form: Figurative – Human, Deer
Size: 8 Feet High
Maps Featured on: (?) 1984 – 2001
Status: Removed, no remains
Quote from the artist: “(In 1982) I was staying at the caravan next to John Cubby’s house (the forest ranger)… he told me a lot about his job which involves the seasonal (red deer) culling. I was taken by the image of the hunter stalking its prey, the mutual transmutation that would occur. The deer hunter is the effigy of the prey becoming the hunter or the hunter becoming the prey. It stands hidden amongst deciduous trees, his body is perfectly camouflaged. In a frozen stance he waits…”
Negative scan from photograph Taken 2000
“Made from windblown oak and European larch, and stands eighteen feet high in a young oak wood near Farra Grain Bridge. The deerhunter knows the habits of his pray intimately, he thinks like a deer, and waits as silently as a tree.” – Early 1984 Map
Created out of wood at Farra Grain just off the main path by the stream. An anthropomorphic deer turned hunter with a rifle. The woodland here is deciduous and you can see in the photograph at the top how the dappled light camouflages the sculpture. Peter Davies recalls that Kemp “says is out to shoot David Nash’s Running Table” which was sited just across the forest track.
“David Kemp’s 1982 Deer Hunter was repaired on many occasions, and was only permanently decommissioned in 2002 to make way for Jo Coupe’s Hothouse.” Quote from Edwina Fitzpatrick 2014. It was removed completely in 2002, (just prior to the 2003 – 05 map being published, as the box where the photograph would have been instead has a photo of waymarkers, a last minute addition…).
Photographs by Mike Kewley. Website Link Here.
Deer Hunter’s waymarker from 1997 was an Owl, it was later moved to the Ridding Wood Trail in 2002.
Sculpture in other Artworks
Grizedale 1 – 1989 – Panayiotis Kalorkoti
The maquette of Deer Hunter can be seen on Bill Grant’s desk in this picture above. Below its head is clear in a box top left.
Grizedale 2 – 1989 – Panayiotis Kalorkoti
Further paintings of sculptures in the forest in can be seen on the Gallery in the Forest page.
Artist’s other work in Grizedale –
Scale Green Birdman – 1981
Rook Crossing – 1981
The Wood Winders – 1984
Forest Fugue – 1984
Ancient Forester 1 – 1987
Ancient Forester 2 – 1995
Exhibition – 1984
Artist’s Website: www.davidkemp.uk.com
Page last updated Jan 2021
Grizedale Forest Sculpture An Unofficial Archive 