Aerial view of a giant stick skeleton sculpture

First Came the Landscape

Discover Ingela Ihrman's giant wooden sculpture, located within the beautiful Outer Estate, on the main road into Eden, just south of Melon car park.

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The pelvis of a giant stick skeleton sculpture

Close up of the feet of a giant stick skeleton sculpture

Ingela Ihrman
First Came the Landscape, 2023

Beech wood

Man with chainsaw cutting fallen tree into pieces

First Came the Landscape is a giant stick skeleton made from the trunk, limbs and branches of a single beech tree that was blown down during Storm Eunice in 2022.

Created by Swedish artist Ingela Ihrman, the figure reflects the delicate cycle of life – a system of death and rebirth as things move from one form to another. It will remain here in this location until the pieces of wood – the pelvis, spine, femur, humerus and skull - naturally break down, returning back to the ground and benefiting the surrounding ecology of the earth as they decay.

Side by side comparison of wooden skeleton artwork merging into the earth

2022 vs 2024

...a meditation on fragility that’s at once playful and profound.

The Guardian

The figure invites viewers to wonder at its meaning: is it an archaeological excavation of a giant, a lesson in human anatomy, or a hügelkultur – a raised horticultural bed of wood and plant debris?

The title expands the time axis of the place in which the figure rests and is reminiscent of what was here before, when the landscape was shaped by giant forces.

First Came the Landscape was originally commissioned by Uppsala Konstmuseum in 2022. This new version was commissioned by the Eden Project in 2023.

How the artwork was made

Press coverage of First Came the Landscape

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First Came the Landscape