Artist in Residence at Hamilton MAS
May - October 2020
During 2020 Jane was delighted to become the first Artist in residence at Hamilton MAS, the micro art space by the sea on Bent Hill in Felixstowe. Between lockdowns, she set about drawing and filming in the neighbouring Seafront Heritage Gardens, an excellent example of Victorian pleasure gardens and began exploring the community affections for these important green spaces.
An early postcard of Hamilton MAS as it was in the 1960’s, a community shop sitting at the centre of Bent Hill in Felixstowe.
‘The eight Grade II listed gardens are of significant historic interest and give the town its title, “The Garden Resort of East Anglia”. These beautiful landscaped and sumptuously planted gardens were created a hundred years ago, as a result of the popularity and fashion in late Victorian times for visiting coastal locations, in pursuit of improved health and relaxation.
The natural springs occurring along the cliffs, together with the proximity to the beach, encouraged this site to be developed as a pleasure ground around a pump room for people to take the spa waters. Today the interconnecting gardens stretch
for almost a kilometre along the promenade, with a significant proportion of original planting still surviving and the original path layout little altered.’ Text from Visit Felixstowe website.
She began the residency process by referencing historical postcards of the gardens (which she found nestling in an antique shop in Long Melford) using the sepia photographs as a guide, she navigated the gardens, exploring how they had visually evolved through time:
‘One of my favourite Valentine’s postcards from the 1930’s features the Dripping Well and in the photograph there is a woman and a young girl staring, seemingly mesmerised into its watery mouth. That is what moving water does in a garden- it draws one to it and captivates.’
Back in the flexible art space, Jane’s large suspended drawings based upon the Italian Villa Gamberaia which were displayed in the large windows, inviting viewers to reflect upon the influence of Italian Renaissance formal gardens on 19th century pleasure gardens. The circular drawings and paintings appear like convex camera lenses, pulling the viewer into an atmospheric memory of different views of the garden. Acknowledging how we all connect and experience them through our own lens; the eye, the camera, historical postcards, stories passed down to us, the drawings invite us to reflect on our individual relationship with them.
During the summer months, followers of the project were invited to submit photographs of their own ‘formal’ gardens that Jane has translated into a series of small wooden painted postcards, echoing the tradition of garden postcard correspondence.
These were exhibited as part of the October showcase exhibition at Hamilton MAS, alongside paintings and films that focused on the restorative water features in the gardens.
The project was warmly received and extremely well attended as these visitors comments show:
‘Such a lovely exhibition exploring how gardens can offer us so much, Especially as we navigate these strange and unfamiliar times. Your work brought us to a part of Suffolk we rarely visit but brought back lots of happy childhood memories.’
‘What a wonderful exhibition.The longer one looks the more one sees… and thinks… a beautiful invocation of the past and overlaid with the present. Dreamy, thought provoking, bringing back joyful memories of seaside holidays and the carefully tended seafront gardens. The images here show so many fascinating aspects of gardens, one could linger for a long time.’
Throughout the residency, a series of garden themed public events were offered:
The project was launched as part of the online 2020 Chelsea Fringe Festival
Changing exhibitions of large drawings, paintings and films
Showcase ‘tours’ of the project with residents, visitors & workers/volunteers in the public gardens asking ‘what are gardens for?'
Drawing workshop in the gardens
