ABSTRACT
In 2014, you curated a major contemporary arts exhibition at Hestercombe Art Gallery which crowned a long process of garden and house restoration initiated in the 1990s. After twenty years of hard work, the grounds had been reunited with Hestercombe House itself (both formerly under local authority control) under the auspices of an independent charity, Hestercombe Gardens Trust. As the eighteenth-century layout of the estate had finally been reclaimed, the artists featured in the gallery upstairs were invited to imaginatively “leap the fence,” just as garden designers had done 250 years earlier. In doing so, they set out to interrogate boundaries not just between inside and outside, but also between art forms, private and public, local and global. The refurbished gardens which the art displays overlooked had just opened to the public for an affordable fee, whereas the Georgian landscape gardens had been created then continually revamped for the exclusive enjoyment of mostly aristocratic owners. In that particular context, British artist Mark Hosking’s rice harvesting machine (Untitled, 1997, painted wood) could be read as a commentary on the invisible links tying a place like Hestercombe – a seat of power, class, and money – to the environmental resources of developing countries which had once been part of the British empire and helped many landowners build their fortunes back home. Would you say that concern for these hidden ties and responsibility for the present state of north/south relationships and the exploitation of a global environment is a recurring feature of the artists displayed at Hestercombe?
