Cultural Exchange

Irish Arts Review

Cultural ExchangeAuthor(s): Peter MurraySource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring, 2005), pp. 80-85Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25503170 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 04:10

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Irish Arts Review is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Arts Review(2002-).

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.25 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 04:10:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iar

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25503170?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


* / ?ht

ts

Six Irish artists show

work this spring at the

New .Art Centre *

Sculpture^ ParKflncf *

: J?U. - - _

Galleryin:??glaf]'d, .

Cultural Exchan

where artistic

connections between

the two countries have a

rich history as PETER

MURR AY. reports

tf*.

v*?

:-/f?::'' -'?f^' ''

'"JU^?

-^ iH

t^: . ^

:W"; -^M?'1

; f\ <ts*

?4&

sf'? v



?V

,f:

if;'"

*&'V

-JET * '

* *-4I^^M?fi^ All - r#

1 - , if v.-' -J

.%?\.

j'^

y\*??

&?*J " "*& :

-?fc.. 'Sv

? " ^?'^j^MmZ^?**^**^ M~n*i? "^

SCULPTURE

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

The New Art Centre Sculpture Park and Gallery, at

Roche Court in Wiltshire, is tucked away among the

gentle hills of Winterslow, eight miles north-east of

Salisbury. Although located off the beaten track,

Roche Court, a Regency House built for Horatio Nelson in 1804,

is well signposted. Privately owned and self-financing, it provides

both outdoor and indoor facilities for exhibiting art, mainly sculp

ture. The curatorial staff, led by Helen Waters, administers a pro

gramme of temporary exhibitions and maintains a permanent

survey of modern and contemporary sculpture. There are semi

nars, tours and lectures, and an annual competition for schools.

The director and founder is Madeleine Ponsonby (Fig 3). Partly due to Ponsonby's Irish ancestry (she is descended from the 19th

century political dynasty of John Dillon, as well as from the

Mathew family of Cork), Roche Court also forms a unique bridge

between the contemporary art worlds of Britain and Ireland. The

current exhibition New Sculpture from Ireland underlines this

commitment, with Alice Maher, Liadin Cooke, Eilis O'Connell,

Maud Cotter, Daphne Wright and Mark Joyce showing new works

in the woodlands and gardens surrounding the house and gallery.

Ponsonby was introduced to art from an early age. The only

daughter of an army officer, she grew up in Buckinghamshire and

in North Cornwall, where her parents often shared 'Coolgrena' a

house near Trebetherick, with the poet and architectural conserva

tionist, John Betjeman. Betjeman's wife Penelope Chetwode, an

intellectual in her own right and a

formidable art historian, had been

raised in India and was knowledge

able on Indian art and architecture,

and on European Renaissance art.

As a teenager, Madeleine accompa

nied Penelope and her son Paul on a

six-month tour of Italy. 'We travelled

* * Xf

1 LlADIN COOKE

Ballroom

(ornament) 2003

Brass (unique) 80 x 64 x 64cm

Funded by the

Henry Moore

Institute Leeds

2 The New Art

Centre Gallery

designed by

Stephen Marshall

3 Lady Bessborough Photo: Mark

Luscombe-Whyte

8 1



^_ CULTURAL EXCHANGE

4 Daphne Wright

Deathmask, Horace, 14 June 2003 2003

painted plaster 104 x 76 x 60 cm

Courtesy the artist

and Frith Street

Gallery, London

5 Alice Maher The

Four Directions (I) 2004-2005 snail

shells and

polystyrene, part of a four piece work

121 x 25.32cm

6 ElL?S O'CONNELL

Each Day 2002

Bronze (unique) 250 x 60 x 90cm

7 ElLlS O'CONNELL

Under and Over

A/0.5 2002

edition 1 of 3 bronze

250 x 80 x 64cm

up in the mountains on mules, visiting remote villages and churches

in the Abruzzi. It was a magical journey.'

This introduction led to Madeleine embarking on a career in

the arts. Although New Art Centre refers nowadays to the indoor

and outdoor exhibition spaces at Roche Court, the original New

Art Centre, founded by Ponsonby (along with Caryl Hubbard) in

1957, was a small contemporary art gallery located on Sloane

Street in London. Early patrons included Kenneth Clark, John Rothenstein of the T?te, Robin Darwin of the Royal College of

Art and John Sainsbury. Ponsonby specialised in introducing the

work of younger artists to the public, although in time she built

up an impressive list of artists, many of them connected to St Ives

in Cornwall. There were exhibitions of work by Ben Nicholson,

Terry Frost and Barbara Hepworth, whose estate the New Art

Centre was later asked to represent. Peter Lanyon exhibited with

Ponsonby in 1975, and two years later the New Art Centre was

the first to have a survey exhibition of the St Ives group?long

before the 1985 show at the T?te.

In 1963, Madeleine married Arthur Ponsonby, of Castle Mary,

Cloyne, in Co. Cork. She moved to Ireland but continued to man

age the New Art Centre, travelling regularly to London. The

house at Castle Mary, originally a Georgian building, had been

remodeled after 1900. By 1910 it had been transformed into an

elaborate mock castle, complete with a large square battlemented

tower and mullioned windows. However this transformation may

have hastened its demise: destroyed by fire during the War of

Independence in May 1920, the castle is now a ruin, while the

mM^m:

mm

fe^fe

Over the past twelve years, Roche Court has grown to become an

important centre for 20th century and contemporary art

stable wing has been converted into the present Castle Mary house.

On the death of a cousin, Arthur inherited the title Earl of

Bessborough but eventually, and with great regret, Castle Mary

had to be sold and Arthur and Madeleine settled in England, at

Roche Court. When the lease on the Sloane Street gallery ran out

in 1993, Ponsonby decided to transfer the New

?Art Centre to their home in Wiltshire. The

garden, overlooking the Solent and

^ the Isle of Wight, became an out

K^ door gallery, with exhibitions of

^^^L Barbara Hepworth and others.

^^^H Over the past twelve years,

^^^^^ Roche Court has grown to

^^^^B become an important cen

^^^^A tre for 20th century and

^^^^^ contemporary art, as well as

^^^A remaining a working farm of

^^^^ 120 acres. A prize herd of

^^m Limousin cattle forms an atten

^r tive audience at vernissages. (At "

Castle Mary in the 1960s, Arthur

Ponsonby had been one of the first to

introduce Limousin cattle to Ireland). A gallery and an artists'

house have recently been added to the complex of buildings.

Throughout the woodlands and garden, the number of sculptures

on display has grown steadily. At any one time, over one hundred

works are on view. They now include Anthony Caro's 1999-2001

steel mastaba Egyptian, Barbara Hepworth's 1963 bronze Square

Form (Two Sequences), Richard Long's 2002 Slate Atlantic, a semi

circle of Cornish Delabole slate set into the lawn, and Barry

Flanagan's bronze marching hare, Drummer (1996). There are also

works by Kenneth Armitage, Anya Gallaccio, Antony Gormley and Elisabeth Frink. Twenty acres of lawn and woodland around

the main house are reserved for this semi-permanent display of

large outdoor sculptures. In recent years, works by younger Irish

artists such as Alice Maher, Eva Rothschild and Eilis O'Connell, have been placed alongside works by British artists Gavin Turk, Alison Wilding and Richard Deacon. David Nash has used trees

felled by storms, to create several sculptures at Roche Court.

In the walled garden to the east of the house there is a per

manent exhibition of inscribed stones and sculptures incorporat

ing'lettering. One of the finest examples of lettering shown at

Roche Court in recent years was a sculpture by Richard

Kindersley, commissioned to commemorate the millennium, and

8 2 I

IRISH ARTS R K V I E W SPRING 200 5



sited at the edge of the woodland near the house. Now trans

ferred to Gatton Park in Surrey, on the Pilgrim's Way, the sculp

ture consists of a ring of ten orthostats of Caithness flagstone,

each stone representing a period of two centuries and inscribed

with a text of the relevant period, from the writings of St John,

St Augustine, Boethius, Erigena, St Anselm, St Thomas Aquinas,

Shakespeare, St Francis of Sales, Goethe and T S Eliot. The texts

refer to the understanding of human existence, as expressed by

writers at those different eras in history. This fascination with let

tering goes back to Madeleine's years spent in Co. Cork. In Castle

Mary, Madeleine found herself in a part of the world with a thriv

ing intellectual and artistic life, led by the considerable presences

of Joan and Rene Hague. Joan, the daughter of Eric Gill, had met

Rene when he lived with the Gill community at Capel-y-Ffin.

They moved with their daughter Rosalind to Shanagarry House

in Co. Cork. An historical writer and translator of Tielhard de

Chardin, Rene was an inspired calligrapher, inscribing Latin and

English texts on wall hangings, window blinds, stone slabs and

lintels. Throughout Shanagarry House there were inscriptions

fmm

and quotations, exhortations to living a fuller intellectual and

spiritual life. He also tutored Madeleine's children, teaching them

Latin. At the gallery in Sloane Street, there were exhibitions of

the work of Eric Gill and David Jones. The inspiration of Hague and of Gill has remained with Ponsonby, the gallery and gardens at Roche Court containing many examples of fine inscriptions. In

the house she has preserved some of the original calligraphy wall

hangings by Hague, inscribed with the story of Troy. 'That was

my first introduction to the power of the letter, and how much it

can convey.' In Cork also she met Pat Scott, an architect and

painter, a member of the White Stag Group, whose Modernist

aesthetic extended through painting, buildings and furniture.

Although determinedly Modernist and contemporary, the

recent additions to the main house at Roche Court blend in well

with the existing Regency house, orangery and stable wing. In

1998, the new gallery (Fig 2) designed by Stephen Marshall of

Munkenbeck and Marshall, was constructed, connecting the

main house to the orangery. Facing south, the gallery follows the

line of the original kitchen wall, overlooking a gently sloping

SPRING 2005 IRISH ARTS REVIEW |

83



BBtl?^JLPTURE_ ?1| CULTURAL LANDSCAPE |j|

lawn. The south wall is composed entirely of plate glass, the roof

appearing to 'float' above a transparent veil. The glass wall is

interrupted only by two vertical elements, oak doors, the frames

of which cleverly conceal supports for the roof. Inside, the gallery

has three unobstrusive steps along its seventeen-metre length.

The north wall is white, as is the ceiling. The gallery is used for

temporary exhibitions of smaller sculptures, and paintings. More

recently, inspired by Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, Stephen Marshall designed an artists' house, separated from the main

house by a paved courtyard. Below a traditional slated roof (using

slates from Salisbury Cathedral's old roof), the artists' house is a

Modernist homage to De Stijl and Theo van Doesburg's 1924

manifesto, where windows, doors and sills are employed as ele

ments in an abstract composition, based almost entirely on the

contrast between vertical and horizontal rectangles. Both of these

new commissioned buildings have won many awards, including

the American Institute of Architects Excellence in Design

Commendation and the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize. Between

n

The exhibition of new sculpture from Ireland is a decisive move forward ?1

for Roche Court, concentrating attention both on the Irish connection and m also on the quality of work being produced by the six artists involved

|| the artists' house and the existing Regency house, in the small

paved courtyard, a large slate slab, carved by Gary Breeze, is set

into the wall. This slate is inscribed with the names of the town

lands around Cloyne, among them Kilgrelane, Ballinaclash,

Barnagea, Kings Wood and, of course, Castle Mary.

The exhibition programme at Roche Court is imaginative and

varied. The most recent exhibition, by Gary Breeze, highlighted

his ability to unite often whimsical and light-hearted choices of

text, with a style of consummate skilled lettering more often

associated with graves and sombre memorials. In 2003 Penelope

Curtis curated an exhibition reflecting on 20th-century art, This

was Tomorrow. The show juxtaposed Bubble House, a film made

by Tacita Dean in a derelict futuristic beach-house, with Figures

in a Landscape, Dudley Shaw Ashton's 1953 film documenting the sculptures of Barbara Hepworth. Other artists in the exhi

bition included Liam Gillick, Eva Rothschild, whose Bad Hat

8 Mark Joyce

The Bluebell Suite

2004/2005 installation of

canvases

9 Maud Cotter

Making Sense and

Nonsense 2005

card, resin, glass and wood

70 x 25 x 9cm

was loaned by Leeds City Art Gallery, and Toby Paterson, whose -Oil Pavilion for Public Transport (Rietveld Bus Shelter) takes a wry 1|1?1 look at the aspirations of Moderism. Rothschild, a Dublin-born

l?pi artist living in London, was afterwards commissioned to make if?l

Meta, a stainless steel sculpture of interlinking triangles, perfo- iKl rated by circles, which is now sited in the garden at Roche Court. Sill

The programme of residencies in the artists' house has also fllif borne fruit? most recently with Graham Murrell, former head

1|||| of photography at St Martin's School of Art, whose year-long res-

??ll idency in 2003 led to an exhibition with the apt title Twelve W??

Months. Murrell's photographs, documenting the house and its ftfff

surroundings, are a sensitive response to the effects of light and f?li

weather on the outdoor sculptures, and to the minimalist archi- i8??

tecture of Stephen Marshall. ^??? The exhibition of new sculpture from Ireland is a decisive W&M

move forward for Roche Court, concentrating attention both on ????

the Irish connection and also on the quality of work being pro- f?||p duced by the six artists involved. Alice Maher's The Four S?|E$

Directions (I), made from the shells of snails (Fig 5) ||lt| echoes earlier works by this artist, such as Bee Dress. W?M , *?fIf

This delicate work is shown in a window of the artists' *0m

house. Maher utilises delicate and often overlooked l?f?S

aspects of nature to comment on the fragility of human iHi

culture and identity. Thorns, berries and nettles all have %m?

featured in her work. A previous work shown at Roche ||p|

Court in 2003, The Axe (and the waving Girl) has been ?^S

acquired by the Irish Museum of Modern Art and is M?? now installed in the grounds at Kilmainham. Maud ?t?i Cotter's Making Sense and Nonsense, also located in the llfei artist's house (Fig 9) on the wall of the bathroom, con- llpl sists of a long worm-like form, precisely crafted from sec-

t???

tions of corrugated card, which overflows from two llpl

wine glasses and drapes down from a shelf. Liadin Cooke's '0M

Ballroom (ornament), resembling a large puffball on first glance BEI but actually made of cast brass (Fig 1) was inspired by the fiS Victorian splendour of the house on Grosvenor Place that houses

IpfB the Irish Embassy. Cooke is fascinated by the way in which ideals ISl of beauty in the 19th century were sublimated into decorative

^H schemes which sought to express the control of nature by g$m

mankind. The large brass puff-ball is in fact covered with repre- |?|g sentations of insects, social beings as much as those who danced

|pf| in the ballroom of the house on Grosvenor Place. Cooke's sec-

Sp ond work in the exhibition, made of anodised aluminium, is

S|?j titled Syeg (taboo). Daphne Wright's Deathmask, Horace, a white 9??

plaster cast of the head and neck of a bull, reminiscent of one of m?? the Limousin cattle at Roche Court, is installed in the orangery %?? (Fig 4). This stark cast is accompanied by a series of intaglio l||| prints of bulls, each with its own name, Luke, Reuben, George ^H

84 IRISH AR T S R E V I E W S P R I N G 2 0 0 5

I



.' . ? **4

and Joe. Kills O'Connell has created two new works

in bronze for this exhibition. Each Day is a vertical

sculpture, in form somewhat like the fin of a whale,

with strong vertical ribs (Fig 6). At the top, the piece

bends slightly, forming a shelter. O'Connell's other

sculpture Under and Over No. 5, is also a free-standing,

vertical piece, although it tilts to one side (Fig 7). The

textured surface again suggests an organic source, and

indeed the sculpture has been cast in bronze from

form made of bent wood, with resin texturing. Mar

Joyce is a somewhat unexpected addition to this groups

of sculptors. A painter, he has chosen to exhibit a series^

of outdoor paintings in the woods near the orangery

(Fig 8). The installation, entitled The Bluebell Suiu

cheerfully plays with the idea of 'gallery', the trees

the undergrowth being used as supports for a series i

simple abstract paintings.

Almost half a century after founding her first galle

in Sloane Street, Madeleine Ponsonby shows no sig

of flagging in her enthusiasm for showing and pre

moting serious and good quality contemporary art.

PETER MURRAY is Curator of the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery Cork.

New Sculpture from Ireland at the New Art Centre Sculpture Park & ".

Gallery, Roche Court, Wiltshire, UK with work from Liadin Cooke, Maud Cotter, Mark Joyce, Alice Maher, Ellis O'Connell and Daphne Wright until 3 April 2005.

All images ?The Artists.

.J'.,... V,-' ^ ; -\...i, ^

~V--V^w' \

r\ v v.\A

*'s*

/>ri

, 0

* *

ffcH">

?Vf?m

IF.

SPRINC 2 0 0 5 IRISH A H T S \\ E V 1 E \\



Cultural Exchange

Documents

Transcript of Cultural Exchange