Tatton Park Biennial: Sited Commissions
FAYE CLARIDGE has developed work examining the Chinese specimen tree, Emmenopterys henryi, which has grown at Tatton Park for nearly a hundred years but never flowered. The artist presents a series of photographs which capture people at the moment of making a wish in the Mirror Pool in the Tower Garden. The photographs are presented in the Exhibition Room in Tatton's Mansion.
Left: Far corner of the Tower Garden; Right: from the series To Travel, To Dream, To Wish, photograph, 2008
Right: Emmenopterys Henryi at Tatton Park
To travel, to dream, to wish
For the Tatton Park Biennial 2008 I propose to work in the Tower Garden area, where Emmenopterys henryi (a specimen tree from China) has grown for almost 100 years. Brought to the UK by specimen hunters and introduced to the garden to impress friends, in this alien environment it has never fulfilled its natural cycle. It has never flowered.1
The tree is a powerful symbol of dislocation, travel, arrogance and desire. The confidence of its planting, followed by the ongoing hope of flowering, must be set against a nagging awareness that the natural world will not always bend to human endeavour.
E. Henryi is just one symbol of travel and desire in this area of the garden. The sphinx stone bench and circular pool show direct influence of travels abroad, as well as introducing European folklore. As a ‘mirror pool’, the dark circle of water powerfully continues the sense of yearning in this enclave. In some legends mirror pools are used as portals, collapsing space and time, so ghosts from the past or figures from the future can be seen by those who peer into their depths. They offer a glimpse of a spirit world, parallel to – and potentially offering a new perspective on – our own.
This is particularly apt in a garden with so much history and geography collapsed into one space. The faces of all past and present visitors are momentarily captured (though not previously collected or recorded) as they look into its surface. Rippled by the low-pressure pipe in its centre, their reflections are distorted and uncanny, familiar yet new. Constantly in motion, the surface is like a video or projection of the world above it, reflecting, representing and inventing, in a Derridian or Lacansian mode. It provides a valuable location for self-awareness and the awareness of ‘active perception’ – of ourselves as sentient beings within an interconnected, shifting web of experience.
In one moment it’s possible to see trees from many ages and continents, visitors from all over the world and planes flying overhead to global destinations and different time zones, all reflected in this steady ebb of water. Four times a day, the planes seen reflected in this pool are leaving Manchester for Sanya in China, where the relatives of the Emmenopterys Henryi flower annually, unaware of the delicate specifics of climate and conditions that allow this act to be fulfilled. Or of its travelled kin’s fate, whose new home aborts its natural behaviour.
The tourist planes also connect to historic collectors, travelling by different methods but with similar motivation of exploring and consuming. They are also a reminder of current pollution and future climate change issues for the garden.
The pool’s mythical resonances are additionally kept alive by the visitors that use it as a wishing well. Children are encouraged to make a secret wish, throwing in coppers. Perhaps unaware of this act’s root in the belief in magical water nymphs, the exchange of something precious for wisdom or other gain, recurs in folklore. It is significant that though this belief is no more, the transaction continues, suggesting commerce and consumerism are more durable than legends.
Children also seem most susceptible to the pool’s irresistible lure to look at their reflection. Again, probably unaware of the legend of narcissus, they re-enact this ancient myth and look for the image of ‘another’ in the watery feature. They are more likely to be familiar with Harry Potter’s use of a mirror (the mirror of Erised - 'desire' backwards) in which he perceives the ghosts of his parents. Whether he actually sees them or instead manifests his strongest desire into the mirror is a philosophically relevant question about projection, raised in the book and in many older ‘mirror legends’.
It is the interplay between present, future and past, desire, hope and ‘reality’ that I will explore, working with video and photography as media appropriate to the themes of capturing and manipulating within the subject of collections and notions of time/history. The garden itself presents fleeting glimpses of its owners and visitors in reflections, footprints, planting etc, and I will record/collect/represent some of these, as a ‘document’ of the garden’s interaction with humans.
The garden’s ‘mirror pool’ will be the focus for my work. There I will capture the present-day scenes that embody these issues - escapist visitors, polluting planes of consumer-explorers, wish-laden pennies, unfulfilled specimen trees - all reflected in its surface. I will also introduce resonances of its past and future events through digitally manipulation, in the spirit of divination. This will remind the viewer of the power of the pool, the wider garden and all the collections it contains, as a portal to other times, other lives, other places. Through shadowy silhouettes and distorted portraits, the garden’s reach across history and geography will be pulled together.
1 Only one Emmenopterys Henryi has ever flowered in the UK, in 1987 in Wakehurst Place, West Sussex. The tree was 75 years old at the time of flowering and has not flowered again since.
Presentation of works
Exhibition: 23 August to 8 September 2008
The photographs will be displayed in the Exhibition Room in the Mansion.
Biography
Born in Birmingham, England, in 1976, Faye Claridge received an MA Fine Art distinction from UCE in 2005. She has had seven solo shows and her group exhibitions in the UK include numerous shows in London, Cardiff, Bath, Norwich and Birmingham. She has also worked internationally with exhibitions in Greece and France and a residency in the Czech Republic. Last year she was artist-in-residence at the New Art Gallery Walsall and Futura in Prague. Currently she is working on commissions for a Liverpool Capital of Culture exhibition in addition to the Tatton Biennial 2008.
She is an interdisciplinary artist, who frequently works site-specifically, often using lens-based media and installation to research the preservation and interpretation of experience. She has worked closely with a number of heritage sites and museums and was shortlisted for the internationally recognised Alchemy project at Manchester Museum.
Claridge’s photographic works have been printed in various magazines, including Source, HotShoe and a-n. Additionally, as a writer and active supporter of artist-led culture, Claridge is co-founder of Periscope project space, a commissioning editor for Midwest artists’ website, a visiting lecturer in Photography & Fine Art and a video journalist for the BBC.