In May 2015, I was invited by art teacher Jane Tucker to work with Wells Cathedral Junior School Year 5 on a video project in a garden, in The Old Deanery Garden in Wells, Somerset. The garden is a walled enclosed ‘Tudor-style garden’ with planting and layout inspired by 16th century plants as grown by Dean William Turner – it’s just down the road from the school, yet hidden from view, and only occasionally open to the public.
The art project with the children aged 9 and 10, was inspired by both the school’s visit to the artist Pipilotti Rist’s exhibition at Hauser and Wirth Bruton, and by Jane seeing the moving image work I’d made about the former Hadspen Garden in Somerset, Flowers, where is the garden for Somerset Art Works Abundance Garden Trail in 2013.
Working over two days in the garden, we used 4 mini iPads set inside homemade shoebox ‘steady cams’ for portability, working in groups of 5 or 6 for an hour and 20 minutes each. The children were invited to focus on following the lines and shapes of the garden through filming 4 simultaneous ‘journeys’ around the garden, along with accompanying sound recording. It was interesting and fun to use the iPads in this way, and we could also immediately put the 4 iPads together on the lawn and see what it would look like when I edited all four together. This film is the assembled journeys made by each group.
‘4 x a garden’ : moving image work : 21’20
inquilines - art and cultivation 