BolwickArts One is the first of an annual residency programme for contemporary artists from around the country. The artists involved were invited to make work in response to this Georgian house and its grounds, and they have chosen to work with different methods and materials in order to achieve this.
Tony Charles has responded to the region’s history as a producer of woollen cloth, and the demise of this activity at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Tony uses his background in steel construction to explore the properties of steel wool.
The material is draped to cover the boathouse (9) and will rust to coincide with the autumn colours of its surroundings. In the barn (11) which was formerly part of a corn mill, and later became a racquets court, the history of the building is evoked through the processes of spinning, burning and hanging the steel wool.
Tony has also made two interventions in the orchard. Pommes Pommes (8) recalls the importing of trees from overseas a century ago, while Found (7) is a collection of found objects which suggests loss and displacement.
Choosing the summerhouse as a base (5), Faye Claridge has become familiar with the place by a process of walking, collecting, reading drawing and photographing.
Inside the rotated summerhouse the viewer is invited to dip into- and continue- this process, which assesses and exaggerates the garden experience. One begins to question which of the sounds, sights and smells have been altered, and which are ‘genuine’. The souvenir album placed on the desk uses various manipulations to highlight tension between the photographer’s desire to record and wish for perfection. While inside the summerhouse the viewer is intentionally shut off from the wider garden, the only distant view being that of a metal swan (13) mimicing a decoy or fairground shooting game.
In the vegetable garden Faye has made a gate from feathers gathered on the estate (6). This highly decorative piece epitomises the Victorian obsession with nature as amusement.
Sarah Cole has been investigating the life and work of Humphrey Repton who is believed to have designed the gardens at Bolwick Hall.
Sarah’s photographs (1) superimpose sections of Repton’s painted landscapes onto images of Bolwick estate, thus emulating his red books, and seeking confirmation of Repton’s hand in the landscape here. Sarah also plays with the idea of reproduction and alteration in her presentation of postcards (2) made to replicate a 1907 watercolour of Bolwick Mill.
On the lawn Sarah has cut out a circle of turf and exchanged it with a circle from the park where the cows graze (14). By swapping the cultured lawn whith the natural grass she questions ways in which we order spaces according to our own cultural desires. In addition the piece refers to the history of the site, using a circle to mark the rose garden which was once central to the view, and noting that on a map of 1834 it was the cow pasture which was called the lawn. Sarah has also transformed an area of woodland near the boathouse into a maze (10). This has become an area of disorientation while drawing one’s attention to the formal layout of trees in this area.
Caroline Fisher has made Waterama (12) as an inquiry into the self contained nature of the water supply here. During the renovations to the house it was necessary to examine and alter the water supply and drainage systems, and repeated testing of the water was carried out.
Bolwick Hall’s water supply is from natural springs which provide water for the house, and also feed the stream which fills the pond. These springs were the reason for the occupation of the site from Roman times. The piece seeks to highlight the transport and testing of water on this site, and the potental dangers which water can present.
Caroline is interested in the way in which art can mimic life, and conversely that the routines of life can be art-like. You are invited to take some fruit from the stall as you leave (16) and thereby to participate in the ‘work of art’.
Sophie Horton’s work uses wool in the external environment to challenge our preconceived notions of the material.
Her piece Charge Over the Fence (15) freeze frames our view of the landscape and draws attention to the ways in which land is used. The intermittent bars of Fair Isle pattern knitted into the yellow wool suggest patterns in the landscape such as grass mowing, crop rotation and even the interior patterns of wallpaper. Knitted on a manual domestic knitting machine, the work makes an exaggerated boundary between the garden and parkand.It thereby acts as a warning of enclosure or exclusion, implying Beware of the Bull or Keep Out.
The video presented in the studio building is a collaboration between Tony Charles and Sarah Cole which explores the ambivalence of the urban dweller to the countryside. In Burning House (4) the form of a house is a site of both fear and pleasure.
The artists and curator would like to thank the following, without whom this exhibition would not have been possible:
Roy Yellup
Charlotte Stafford
Greg, Alex and Harry Fisher
Stephanie Douet
Corinna Barrell
Kirstin Hughes, Broadland District Council
The Arts Council
Norfolk County Council
