FOUNDATION Myths, an orchard of yellow ceramic tree stumps, is the first artwork to be lined up for York Art Gallery's new Artists' Garden.

This playful new commission from Ordinary Architecture, an English art, architecture and design practice with an international profile, now takes its prominent place in two acres of newly opened public space situated within the original St Mary's Abbey walls at the rear of the gallery.

Together with the adjacent Edible Wood, it was created to coincide with the gallery's £8 million redevelopment. The land was previously closed off to the public, but now links with the original York Museum Gardens, Marygate and Exhibition Square through a new snickleway to the side of the gallery.

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On the stump: Charles Holland leans on Ordinary Architecture's Foundation Myths ceramic installation. Picture: Frank Dwyer

Foundation Myths, Ordinary Architecture's debut Yorkshire work, will be in situ for a year, launching what will be a regular location for displaying "new and exciting" artworks for free. The inaugural installation draws on the site's diverse past and its many uses over the centuries, being inspired as much by the persistent myth that architecture evolves directly from nature as by the area’s former days as an orchard, the St Mary’s Abbey ruins and the gallery's Centre of of Ceramic Art (CoCA) displays.

Charles Holland, of Ordinary Architecture, says: “Part of the St Mary’s Abbey precinct, the site for the Artists' Garden has a very rich history and has been home to a remarkable number of uses. These include orchards, gardens, a plant nursery, military ‘hutments’ and the Great Hall of the Yorkshire Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition.

“Foundation Myths springs from these rich associations and aims to be a striking and beautiful artwork that is critically engaged with its site. In making reference to CoCA and the history of the area, we also hope that it makes a fitting first commission for this important gallery setting, with the idea of taking something of the CoCA collection outside.”

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Why yellow, Charles? "I wanted to have a balance between the artwork being quite naturalistic and the colour being artificial," he says.

Emerging from the snickleway and into the summer sun, the garden visitor is struck by the bright yellowness of the two lines of decorative ceramic tree stumps, a yellow as potent as the livery of the Harbour Bar ice cream parlour on Scarborough's Sandside.

"Why yellow? I wanted to have a balance between the artwork being quite naturalistic and the colour being artificial, like a ceramic piece you might find in your marketplace," says Charles Holland. "So you can see them as giant versions of domestic ornaments. They're naturalistic but a little bit stylised in the way that a ceramic robin on a branch in your grandmother's house might have been quite stylistic. I was interested in that relationship with domestic ceramics but putting it outside, so even though it has the scale of a tree, it's still domestic."

Holland had a further reason for selecting yellow – "the colour also resonates with the ivy on the garden walls," he said – and it is unquestionably a striking colour. Indeed interior designers have been said to suggest that yellow is such a provocative colour that it should not be applied to the walls of kitchens, the scene of many a domestic argument.

Mention of this design tip elicited a wry smile from Holland. "I've just inherited a yellow kitchen, after moving into a new home in Deal in Kent, and have been having an interesting debate about what colour it should be," he says. "I would like to think that yellow leads at least to an intense discussion!"

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Foundation Myths: Charles Holland with Ordinary Architecture's garden sculpture in York Art Gallery's Artists' Garden. Picture: Frank Dwyer

Should you be wondering why the yellow stumps are in lines, not only do they replicate the construction of orchards. "I was struck by how the Great Hall was a typical exhibition hall of that period with long rows of matching columns that held up the roof, so I was interested in the artwork chiming with that and with the columns of the abbey ruins too. So it evokes the idea of foundations and remains, as well as having echoes of the orchard, which lined up trees in a grid," says Holland.

"The first architecture is supposed to have been derived from the assemblage of trees, so the column is representative of a petrified tree stump: that's not necessarily true but it's certainly a pervasive myth."

The glazed terracotta artwork was constructed for Ordinary Architecture at Darwen Terracotta, the Blackburn company that had provided tiles for both Ordinary Architecture's collaboration with artist Grayson Perry for A House For Essex and the exterior wall of the CoCA mezzanine level at York Art Gallery.

Reflecting on his delight at Ordinary Architecture attaining York Art Gallery's first garden commission, Holland concludes: "It's a big honour for us and such a lovely space to create for. There's something about the work not being inside the gallery that makes you to relate to the pieces in a different way, as opposed to the usual white walls and minimalist gallery designs.

"Outside, all sorts is going on and it makes the art have to work harder for your attention. It's good to encounter art in the everyday, which is how you also encounter architecture, where you relate it as a building, just as Foundation Myths is clearly sculpture but in an everyday environment."

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Yellow fervour: Charles Holland surrounded by the Foundation Myths installation

Extra Ordinary: Fact File on Ordinary Architecture

* Ordinary Architecture was started by Charles Holland and Elly Ward in 2013, their practice’s name referring to "an interest in the everyday and a desire for our work to reflect critically on the world around us".

* That work covers art, architecture and design projects in Britain and the United States and present projects include the design of the Pavilion of the Applied Arts at this summer’s Venice Architecture Biennale and a public art installation in Los Angeles, while the client list takes in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Living Architecture and the London Design Festival.

York Press: Grayson Perry, dressed as his alter-ego Claire, brought his teddy bear, Alan Measles, to the Yorkshire Museum yesterday

Essex artist Grayson Perry and his teddy bear, Alan Measles, outside the Yorkshire Museum during his York visit in May 2014. Pic: Mike Tipping.

* Before setting up Ordinary Architecture, Holland and Ward worked at FAT Architecture, where Holland was a director. While at FAT, he was responsible for such projects as the Nonument permanent public artwork in Holland, Thornton Heath Library in London and A House For Essex, the practice’s creative collaboration with artist Grayson Perry, as featured on Channel 4's Grayson Perry's Dream House in a "sort of homage to the much maligned people of Essex".