When WaterAid contacted us to help us them create a piece of land art which highlights a powerful message: that more than 1,000 children’s lives could be saved each day of The Wimbledon Championships if they had access to safe water, toilets and hygiene*.
Concept work began almost right away, and soon the Sand In Your Eye team had a clear design and idea of how to recreate it on one of the prestigious courts of Wimbledon.
The team were granted 2 days access into Wimbledon to install, photograph and uninstall the artwork making sure to leave no trace of us ever being there. Understanding the complexities of creating such a detailed design Jamie planned to complete a lot of preparation work here at the studio so that we could stick to the timeframe we’d been given.
The week before instillation Emma, Peter, Jonathan, Mark, Jamie and Jocasta spent 3 grueling days on a field here in Yorkshire meticulously marking out and completing the first cuts needed to create the mosaic on the day in Wimbledon.
Instillation day as Tuesday 4th June, so the team went down the day before. Jamie in the van and Emma, Jonathan, Jocasta and Amy in the car. We were already off on the back foot when we (the team in the car) discovered we had no idea how to get the Tesla started!! 20 minutes of YouTube tutorials on ‘The Basics of Starting Your Car’, the whole team were on the road!
The following morning we were fresh and ready to get started. We arrived on site at 8:15 and after a little hiccup at security, we were all signed in and unloaded by 9:30 ready to get started.
Along with WaterAid and the Wimbledon Foundation the team took over one of Wimbledon’s grass tennis courts next to the iconic Centre Court at The All England Lawn Tennis Club, to create the giant mosaic. The image is of a young boy and his mother enjoying clean water and is created entirely from tennis nets, balls and rackets.
The team from Sand in Your Eye spent 9 nine hours on day one laying the nets, rackets and balls, to bring the portrait to life. The image features 18-month-old Dylan and his mother Anja, 23, from Madagascar who, with the help of WaterAid and the Wimbledon Foundation, now have clean water** in their community.
On Day two with Emma and Jonathan back on the road home, Jocasta Jamie and Amy spent the morning working on some finishing adjustments as well as taking those all important press shots, before we and the WaterAid team uninstalled the artwork and then all set off back home.
The tennis balls were donated by Slazenger, Official Ball of The Championships, and the nets by Edwards Sports, supplier of the world’s finest nets used at The Championships. The rackets were loaned by Give It Your Max, a children’s tennis charity whose ongoing sustainability campaign, ‘Unloved & Unwanted’, collects preloved tennis rackets and redistributes them to children in their school programmes, with the surplus sold on their website and the proceeds going back to the charity.
The tennis nets and balls will be donated to local charities supported by the Wimbledon Foundation, including the Tim Henman Foundation and Tennis For Free. A number of tennis nets will also go to the Wandsworth Work and Play Scrapstore, a charity which reuses resources for educational, artistic, play, create, social or therapeutic activities.
Find out more about WaterAid’s work at wateraid.org
