Major New Artistic Programme for Chiswick House & Gardens
Well known artists participating in a series of commissions and events
Bring Into Being will feature artists including Mark Wallinger and Peter Adjaye
Chiswick House and Gardens is holding a new artistic programme called Bring Into Being as part of its attempt to make the heritage site a cultural hotspot in West London.
The event will feature artist commissions, events and activities brought to you by some well-known names across art, music and science.
All events are open to the public and tickets for the opening weekend of events plus House and Kitchen Garden entry are available online.
The trust has commissioned three site-specific art installations by Turner Prize winning artist Mark Wallinger, Ghanaian-British electronic musician and sound artist Peter Adjaye and a durational installation by Jaimini Patel.
The contemporary art programme marks Chiswick House’s ambition to be not just a heritage site but to become a 'hybrid space' that supports diverse forms of creative practices.
Curated by Mariam Zulfiqar, Bring Into Being invites audiences to reconnect with the past, present and the future of the house and grounds through its eclectic and multicultural programming.
Peter Adjaye will present an eight channel site-specific soundscape titled We Bear the Light of the Earth In Red, Green, Brown and Black (2021) spread across four spaces inside the House. Via QR codes audiences can experience Sunrise of Invisible Gold and Sunset in Rippling Bronze at the entrance of the Gardens and Ionic Temple. The soundscape has been created in collaboration with musicians using different styles and textures of music and instruments prevalent across South Asia and West Africa.
The artwork features: Alok Verma, Jali Fily Cissokho, Jonathan Mayer, Kaykay Chauhan, Rekha Sawhney and Robin Christian.
Jaimini Patel’s ‘durational site-responsive installation Matter as the densest form of energy – energy as the lightest form of matter’ (2021) is created from organic materials collected from the gardens by the artist with the help of gardeners of Chiswick House.
The artwork is determined by the seasonal growth of plants and human intervention in the landscape. Spanning two rooms in the house, the work created during winter/spring will be joined by one created during spring/summer arriving later in the exhibition. The
labour-intensive process of collecting, drying, pressing and freezing the leaves plays a significant role in the artist’s reflection of time.
Mark Wallinger’s artwork British Summer Time (2021) consists of a human sundial in the grounds, and on the hour the sound of a music box playing a familiar waltz, accompanied by drifting bubbles. Wallinger has designed an Analemmatic sundial precisely calculated to the
coordinates of Chiswick House Exedra. The visitor is invited to become the ‘gnomon’ and the shadow they cast points towards the correct time of day, positioning them within the Earth’s daily and yearly cycle around the sun.
Alongside the new art commissions, Chiswick House & Gardens will present an array of workshops led by textile artist Yiran Duan, photographer Jasprit Singh, architect and yoga instructor Lauren Dutton, and a collaborative workshop led by artist and Bjork collaborator
Ansuman Biswas with astroparticle physicist Prof Chamkaur Ghag. The programme will also present a series of student-led workshops and events with UCL Urban Laboratory, UCL’s platform for cross-disciplinary, public-facing urban research, teaching and practice.
Exhibition curator Mariam Zulfiqar said, “Bring into Being was devised as a programme to test the future possibilities of Chiswick House & Gardens. Now a Grade I-listed site, it has had many incarnations in the past. We are experimenting with different forms of activity to see what kind of future this site might have, and the ideas of artists, musicians, scientists and other creative practitioners are central to generating new forms of connection between people and this site.”
Exhibition curator Mariam Zulfiqar
Xanthe Arvanitakis, who joined as Chiswick House & Gardens Director just as Covid hit, said, "Thanks to the generosity of our supporters we have been able to keep the Gardens open throughout the pandemic. It has proved to be a vital asset for the local
community and we're proud to be welcoming more visitors than ever. We're incredibly excited about the prospect of re-opening the doors to the House and developing our vision ‘for everyone every day’. It has been a pleasure to collaborate with such a talented group of
artists who have responded so wonderfully to this special place and this extraordinary moment in time."
Bring Into Being is funded with money from Section 106 and the Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage. The Culture Recovery Fund is being delivered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England.
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May 4, 2021
