Gabion Tower
Cambridge Sculpture Garden
Cambridge, Ontario
September 2012—
September 2014

For an artist who is a sculptor by training, background and inclination, Kitchener-based artist Gareth Lichty does an awful lot of weaving. His work – typically large-scale and installational in nature – tends to foreground weaving in an aggressively sculptural way that transcends the quiet and aesthetically reserved two-dimensionality characteristically associated with the medium. So for a two-year site-specific installation mounted at the Cambridge Sculpture Garden, he utilized one of weaving’s distant industrial cousins as the primary aesthetic element.

At first glance, Gabion Tower (2012) isn’t an overly impressive work. Just under three meters high, it stands atop a slight rise of land in the middle of the garden. Some trees and bushes form a backdrop, shielding it from an adjacent roadway. A pathway curls around the other side, and a nearby bench offers a place to sit and contemplate the work.

But there’s really not all that much to look at. Essentially, Gabion Tower comprises a thick metal pole that rises up out of the ground and is encased in what looks like a circular cage. This is made out of chickenwire and becomes quite bulbous at the top of the work. It’s a shape that’s reminiscent of an old incandescent light bulb, or maybe an onion. Hardly stirring stuff.

But it’s a shape that’s ubiquitous in much of southwestern Ontario (and elsewhere, for that matter). In

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