David Burrows works invoke Blake's embracing of the pastoral idyll. Photo courtesy Garden History Museum
Paul Fitzpatrick headed for the Museum of Garden History to see an artistic take on William Blake...
Cloud & Vision, the response of eight artists to William Blake’s 10-year residence in Lambeth, is showing at London’s Museum of Garden History until September 4 2005.
The museum building, formerly St Mary-at-Lambeth parish church, would have been familiar to Blake as it was a short walk from Hercules Buildings, where he lived from 1790 to 1800. However, this semi-rural idyll was under threat from encroaching industrialization and political unrest.
Artist Polly Gould explained: “The 10 year period Blake lived in Lambeth was a politically volatile one, with the French Revolution shaking the foundations of British institutions.”
Gould has installed a printing press to show the methods used by Blake to produce his words and images. Through her Floating Press (in the form of an internet ‘blog’, or online diary) she establishes continuity between Blake’s voice of dissent and the electronic age.
The Museum of Garden History was formally St Mary-at-Lambeth parish church, not far from Blake's home at Hercules Buildings. Photo courtesy Museum of Garden History
References to botany abound throughout the show. Artificial flowers spew forth into the church font in David Burrows’ Sick Rose, while over the former baptistery Andy Harper’s An Orerry for Other Worlds uses soft brushstrokes of grass to invoke a lost Eden amid a system of stars.
The pastoral theme continues outside in the graveyard where Manuela Ribadeneira has created an ampersand (&) symbol in the grass verge. Illustrating the links Blake made between different worlds, such as ‘heaven and hell’ and ‘innocence and experience’, she takes this idea further by displaying a light box on the ceiling of the museum entrance.
Back inside the museum Sarah Woodfine has used delicate cutout drawings for a three dimensional reconstruction of Blake’s garden.
Elsewhere in the show Annie Whiles uses embroidery to re-imagine Blake as a cosmic hippy embracing life and the universe. Blake’s painting Ghost of a Flea has inspired Fleabowl, by Brian Catling, which conjures up images of demon barbers and leeching blood into basins.
The interior of the museum is illuminated by its stained glass windows. Photo courtesy Museum of Garden History
Phil Coy projects Blake’s poem, which became the famous anthem Jerusalem, from a television monitor onto an autocue casting this well-loved text in a new light.
Cloud & Vision confirms William Blake’s continuing relevance, not just to practicing artists, but also to a wider public. By using contemporary methods, be it the Internet, comic books or broadcasting technology, the artists highlight Blake’s enduring pastoral vision.
As David Burrows puts it in his pamphlet The Sick Rose: “All you people in your Jimmy Choo’s and your Timberlands; kiss joy as it flies by.”
