Backyard | Ilana Goor

Ilana Goor

• Date2004
• TechniquePlough cog-wheels and iron filaments
• Size250x250x80

This is a work from Ilana Goor’s Earth Series which commenced in the 90s and continued to develop at the start of the century. The series incorporates the deep rooted connection of the artist to the Israeli landscapes of her childhood; to kibbutzim and agricultural settlements which are expressed by means of the use of millstones, threshing tools, ploughs and other agricultural work tools. The remains of work tools, as they are expressed in the “Backyard” work, hold a dialogue with sculpture using heavy scraps from other Israeli artists such as Tomarkin and Dorchin. However, contrary to their masculine sculpting, Ilana Goor follows an inner contradictory logic. The remains of the industrial iron and the abandoned materials are in fact refuse which people asked Ilana Goor to collect from their yards. “I collected the ploughs from fields everywhere” Goor states. “People would ask me to collect them from their yards. I always knew that I would change them”. The unwanted objects represent the winding route of the Zionist ethos, the ideology on which Dr Yosef Sapir (Ilana Goor’s grandfather) based his book.  This sculpture and the other sculptures in the “Earth” series were exhibited within the framework of Ilana Goor’s solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2006.