Shelagh Wakely was commissioned to produce an artwork for the Mitsubishi Estate Company's new building. Her work takes the natural world as its inspiration, the imagery referring to a tree in the locality and the pattern of rainfall.
Set within an external sunken courtyard, The Shadow of a Tree is a 12 metre high silvered ethereal glass, which links the walls of the courtyard's lower and upper levels, reflecting in its surface the same species of tree that notates the Gyoko-Dori street outside. A second work, The Pattern of the Rain, is set within the courtyard's paved granite floor of the courtyard and serves as a permanent record of rain falling on the Marunouchi building, as Shelagh Wakely explains:
‘The Pattern of the Rain is the memory of falling rain in a particular place at a particular time: the roof of the Shin-Marunouchi Building on 12 and 13 June 2002: variations in the force of the falling raindrops made by wind or the rain shadow of neighbouring buildings cause the variations in the pattern’.
The work is part of the Marunouchi Art Project, curated and managed by Modus Operandi.
