A question of restoration

Sarah Bennett | Pear Pond | 2018 | Silver on glass

Materiality: provisional states is the culmination of a three-year research project at Hestercombe House and Gardens in Somerset, prompted by the ongoing restoration of the estate and plans to establish it as a centre for art and landscape. Artists Sarah Bennett, Megan Calver and Philippa Lawrence worked in collaboration with Hestercombe's Curator of Contemporary Art, Tim Martin, and visiting curator Kate Best, as well as the estate's archivists and gardeners.

I was invited to contribute to the project as part of a series of dialogue sessions held during 2017 and 2018. I joined a group of artists, curators, architects, horticulturists and academics to consider issues such as what brought this garden to its current state of repair; its reclamation by nature; and the tension between maintenance and entropy. Our own writing and making on these themes has now been added to the archive and will be shared at a seminar on 15 February 2019. 

In the final exhibition, three diverse bodies of work by Sarah Bennett, Megan Calver and Philippa Lawrence criss-cross in a number of fascinating dialogues. For example, there's a thread on domestic labour (Bennett's reversed tapestries, Calver's neatly crafted fire grates, and Lawrence's French-polished logs). And another on the cataloguing and modification of nature (Lawrence's bound bonsai and enamelled tree stump silhouettes, Bennett's 'fake' cherry trees and silverpoint seed drawings, and Calver's images of scorched flowers). It's a thoughtful, thought-provoking show that quietly asks searching questions of the estate's custodians.

Philippa Lawrence | Trace | 2018

Although I've always found this slightly shabby house an eloquent backdrop to its various carefully curated exhibitions, this one seems to sit especially comfortably in the space. Materiality: provisional states acknowledges the house and its absent inhabitants and contents, reminding us of its history as the Devon and Somerset Fire Brigade HQ, and looking outwards to the Jekyll/Lutyens gardens which surround it. If there are no neat take-aways from the show, it's simply a reflection of the fragmented archives that inspired it and a future for the house and gardens that is yet to fully take shape.

Megan Calver | Spill 2 | 2018

Materiality: provisional states

Hestercombe Gallery, Cheddon Fitzpaine, Taunton. Somerset TA2 8LG

Saturday 10 November 2018 - Sunday 24 February 2019