The Engagement Tree sculpture sits in a fork of a tree within the Temple Gardens of the Usher Gallery.
The piece is an extension of a project Edward Allington initiated in Gut Holhausen, Niehiem in Germany in 2000. A visual pun (tree ring) for the completed Usher Gallery development in 2010 it acts as a metaphor for the marriage between the new museum and the existing Usher Gallery, as well as the importance of engagement in the arts.
Edward Allington was born in 1951 and studied art at Lancaster University before moving on to the Central School of Art to complete his postgraduate studies. In 1989 he was winner of the John Moores Prize at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; in 1991-1993 he was the Gregory Fellow in Sculpture, Leeds University; 1993-1996 he was Research Fellow in Sculpture at Manchester Metropolitan University and in 1997 he was Sargant Fellow at The British School at Rome. Currently he is a Reader and Head of Graduate Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.
Edward Allington has works in collections throughout the world including Tate Britain and we hold three works on paper by Allington in the Usher Gallery. He has completed major public commissions in the UK, Germany and France, has written for various art magazines, a collection of his selected essays A Method for Sorting Cows was published in 1998, and he is a contributor to Frieze. Edward was commissioned by the City Council as lead artist for the public art programme for The Collection.