Gazing Ball (49686243293)

Gazing Ball: Lucy + Jorge Orta: 2018.

Gazing Ball (2018) was originally commissioned for an exhibition called Folly! at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Garden in North Yorkshire. New outdoor artworks were made by a number of contemporary artists to re-imagine lost follies now known only through drawings.

Buildings created primarily for decorative purposes, follies were particularly fashionable in eighteenth-century estates, where they were talking points on walks in the open air, acting as a place for people to pause and take in the views or to sit and converse. Gazing Ball has now found its home at YSP within the Bretton Estate, another landscape designed in the eighteenth century and which has a number of follies, including the Greek Temple and Shell Grotto, in addition to a number that have also been lost over time.

Framing the views beyond, Gazing Ball has differently shaped geometric windows within its open structure that offer varied outlooks onto the landscape, observed from the seat at its centre. These devices relate to the historic trend for emphasising special or far reaching vistas.

Cradled at the top, and providing another way of seeing, is a large mirrored sphere that reflects and distorts the lake and surroundings.