Tatton Park Biennial: Sited Commissions
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| Construction of the tower July 2008 | ||
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Background:
Japanese and Chinese pagodas developed from the Indian ‘Stupa’ (tombs where the bones of saints and heroes are buried beneath a central pole). The word ‘Stupa’ derives from a Sanskrit word meaning “to accumulate”. The housing of collections of bones in the ‘Stupa’ evolved to become collections of sacred objects in the Pagodas that followed.
The development of the ‘Stupa’ into the Pagoda is allegedly as a result of a confusion of languages most reminiscent of that most famous of fictional towers; the Tower of Babel. In Southeast Asia ‘Stupa’ were referred to as ‘Chaitya’, meaning “where the holy reside”. ‘Chaitya’ was spoken with a strong accent in these regions and through successive mispronunciations became “pagoda” which indicates “a religious tall structure (like a tower)”.
The Pagoda was therefore born of a transgression of language for the purpose of housing collections of spiritually charged objects within a landscaped environment.
Proposal:
A tower will be built at Tatton Park made of 5 garden sheds stacked one on top of the other based on the traditional form of the Japanese Pagoda. Visitors will have access to an overview of the botanical specimens within the Japanese Garden from the windows of the tower of sheds. The garden was originally created by English gardeners based on ideas found in books on Japanese gardens. Although it has been maintained since by Professor Fukuhara from Kyoto, an expert on Japanese landscaping, with every intention of coercing it into ‘the Japanese style’ - the garden remains a meeting place of two contrasting points of view. I am interested in what happens within the process of translation between cultures when the appearance of one environment is housed within another. Some aspects of this are more apparent than others. Native plants have inevitably intermingled with the introduced collection. Some concessions have been made to an English idea of what is Japanese e.g. the inclusion of Acers in a Tea Garden that does not traditionally contain them. The garden threatens to become outsized, from a Japanese Gardener’s perspective, as the species flourish unevenly in foreign soil and climate.
Inside the structure, there will be wall paintings within the five vertical rooms. These will be made in response to a visit to the temples, palaces and tea rooms of Kyoto, April 2008.
Traditionally, progression through the rooms of historic Japanese buildings follows recognizable patterns. The first room a visitor enters often contains wall paintings of tigers fighting, reflecting the power and dynamism of its owner while the second might house images of twisting pines indicating his longevity and vigour. The private quarters, usually furthest from the reception areas, were often spaces of contemplation and meditation decorated in muted tones with misty mountain peaks rising above clouds. To reflect this progression the paintings in each shed will be made in the Japanese Kano style, but of English scenes and subjects. Instead of fighting tigers in the reception room, for example, will be representations of the tigers heads the last Lord Egerton shot on his travels, now stuffed and displayed in the Tenant’s Hall at Tatton Mansion. A pond scene will greet the visitor on the second floor and the distant hills of the Peak District, where the Egertons built a folly, will appear above the clouds in the top shed. Most of the paintings will have reflective gold paint as their backgrounds, as was traditional in the Kano school in the 1600s. The gold paint was used to intensify areas of light and shade inside the rooms and heighten the connection between the views represented inside the rooms and those outside as will be attempted at Tatton.
Botanical Collectors and Collections:
This work responds to the theme of Botanical Collectors and Collections by reconfiguring the Pagoda; a form originally made for the purpose of housing collections in a landscaped/ garden context. The proposed Pagoda/Tower reflects the housing of one cultural collection in another and simultaneously focuses on how we both separate out and incorporate unfamiliar botanical species within our own idea of local landscape and environment.
A botanical collection goes through several processes of mediation before it reaches the eyes of the public. Firstly the process of collecting is in itself selective. Then there are decisions of how botanical specimens are displayed and landscaped. Visitors usually only see these specimens when many decisions have already been made. The Pagoda/Tower will literally provide an overview of the garden, the landscape in which it is located and a view of the culture from where they originated. This new viewpoint should be as spectacular as the difference between seeing the Italian Garden from ground level and viewing it from the second storey window of the mansion above.
Structural Engineer drawing
courtesy: Fluid Engineers
courtesy: Fiona Sadler, Architect, FKDA
Biography
Nicky Coutts studied at Chelsea College of Arts and obtained a PhD from Royal College of Art. Recently her work has been included in North and South at the Millais Gallery, Southampton and The National Glass Centre in Sunderland; Another Land, The Graves, Sheffield; The Art of White, The Lowry, Manchester; The Human Zoo, The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle; The Entangled Eye, Tokyo, Japan; Animality, Dunedin, New Zealand. She is currently Fine Art Fellow at Middlesex University and a Visiting Lecturer at the Royal College of Art. She has been selected to take part in the first property, Tatton Park, near Manchester, to open in May 2008.
