Tatton Park Biennial: Sited Commissions
DAVID COTTERRELL is devising new work that references Humphry Repton’s Red Book for Tatton Park, in an attempt to alter the visual scale and spatial perspectives of the grounds in accordance with Repton’s principles.
Little Sheep
installation view
digital photograph on acrylic
There are many fascinating and intriguing elements to the grounds and the narratives that created them within the Tatton Park estate. The incremental devotion of time, money and vision to the gardens at Tatton, the family’s gradual rise to prominence and the eccentricities and insatiable collecting of Maurice Egerton. However, on visiting Tatton Park, I was overwhelmed by the effect of the abrupt ending of the lineage and the remarkable contradiction this offered to 500 years of ambition. The investment over generations was for many reasons, but I believe that one of these was the desire to secure the future status and importance of the family. Each generation held the house, gardens and family name in trust. They were charged with safe guarding and enhancing their integrity and importance. In a single life-time, Maurice added more to the diversity of the collections and the gardens than many of his predecessors, travelling the world and returning artefacts until his death and yet the endeavour was ultimately futile. There was no future generation to receive, catalogue, cherish and boast of his collection. The house, and the legacy were to lose their function at the moment of his death.
I am intrigued that Maurice continued to collect until his death despite the uncertainty as to the future of his collection. I find it fascinating that the burden that of expectation that had been passed on to him should have failed to cheat the inevitable irony of mortality.
On visiting Tatton I was privileged to view the Repton Red Book commissioned in 1791. His vision of enhanced nature was fascinating. He believed in four principles:
The text is fascinating as it offered a step-by-step guide to grandeur. The design and manufacturing of greatness was Repton’s business and he unashamedly offered the secrets of historic importance to his clients. Sponsoring village pubs, churches and town halls to insist on prominence of the family crest, hiding boundary fences to enable an estate to appear larger than it actually was and creating approaches and avenues to enable the principle house to appear grander than it had previously been perceived. His ideas were innovative and at times comical in their candidness. At Tatton Park he advised the addition of sheep to draw the viewers eye beyond the bodies of water and to ensure that a true appreciation of scale was rendered to the visitor.
I propose a series of modest continuations of the work of Repton. Although now too late for the Egertons to employ in their own aspirations to higher status, they could still serve to enable the viewer to question the authenticity of the views that they were enjoying. I propose a small flock of miniature sheep to support a shift in perception of scale, a grand architectural folly and the addition of several elements retrieved from Maurice Egerton’s travels. At key Repton defined vistas the miniature sheep and other scaled elements, would be placed in the distance to encourage us to imagine an even greater landscape. Coloured to support aerial perspective, they would be placed to remind us that gardening is a constructed and heroic modification of nature, not merely the framing of territory.
Biography
David Cotterrell received an MA in Fine Art: Combined Media from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 1997. David is an installation artist working across varied media including video, audio, interactive media, artificial intelligence, device control and hybrid technology. His work exhibits political, social and behavioural analyses of the environments and contexts, which he and his work inhabit. He has been recently working in Shanghai, China on research into the impact of population expansion with the support of an Arts Council England and British Council award.
Over the last ten years, his work has been extensively commissioned and exhibited in North America, Europe and the Far East, in gallery spaces, museums and within the public realm. Cotterrell's recent exhibitions include: Eastern Standard: Western Artists in China at MASS MoCA North Adams, Massachusettes, USA; Eurasia One at Island 6 Art Centre, Shanghai. His forthcoming exhibition War and Medicine, commissioned by the Wellcome Trust, will be held at the Wellcome Galleries, London and The Hygene Museum, Dresden in Autumn 2008.