THE latest addition to Harlow Sculpture Town collection was unveiled on Saturday afternoon.

Members of the artistic community gathered by the cycle path that crosses the Harlow Town Park to mark the placing of Minerva at the heart of the park.

YH spoke to sculptor Irena Posner about her work and the journey from idea to unveiling of her remarkable work.

Harlow has a proud tradition of placing contemporary sculpture in public spaces for the whole community to enjoy.

The commission was part of the Harlow Art Trust’s 70^th Anniversary Celebrations and it is the 108^th in the town’s remarkable collection of public artworks which includes pieces by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Auguste Rodin. 

Irena Posner is the Harlow Art Trust’s 7th Sculpture Town Artist In Residence (STAIR07).  She started carving in May at the Portland Sculpture & Quarry Trust before the stone was moved to Harlow Town Park in June. Over the course of the next month Park visitors enjoyed the opportunity to watch Irena work. The process of making the sculpture on-site was inspired by Harlow Sculpture Town’s first public commission by Mary Spencer-Watson who carved ‘Chiron’ outside Moot House in The Stow, Harlow in 1953. 

The sculpture connects the narratives of Chiron and the enduring legacies of Harlow’s Celtic and Roman past. The 8ft owl form with human feet perched on a log draws on the discovery of a fragment of a Roman statue depicting Minerva whose sacred companion was an owl. It is through this connection to the goddess, that the sculpture speaks to feminine subjectivities and embraces the goddess’s virtues of wisdom and artistry.

Between her work on her sculpture Irena brought traditional sculpture-making to Harlow through a community focussed stone carving project. From April to September, she ran a series of workshops for schools and the local community offering an introduction to sculpture and relief carving in Portland stone. Her exhibition We return to our strange life of stone’ at the Gibberd Gallery, features carvings made by schools and members of the Harlow community. It also illustrates the story of the creation of ‘Minerva’.