I went for a walk, not a very long one, at a place called Nature in Art, at Twigworth in Gloucestershire, according to the website ‘the world’s first museum and art gallery dedicated to fine, decorative and applied art inspired by nature’ which sounds a bit catch-all for my tastes.
Not so very long ago people spent a lot of time saying to themselves and others, ‘Yes, but is it art?’ These days we pretty much accept that it IS art, whatever it is.
I spend rather more of my time saying, ‘Yes but is it nature?’ I don’t find ‘nature’ quite such a simple concept as so many people seem to.
Nature in Art is in fact a permanent, though changing, exhibition partly inside Wallsworth Hall, a Georgian mansion, and partly in its garden. In the house are galleries featuring depictions of ‘natural’ subjects – frogs, lions, elephants, snakes, dodos and whatnot. Some of these are paintings. Some of them are three dimensional.
And of course you walk around the galleries just as you walk in any other gallery, but the real action is outside, a chunk of land, looked after but not too well-groomed, with pieces of sculpture scattered around it: a metal squid, giant poppy seed heads, the tail of a whale (seen above).
Now, it seems to me, you might ask yourself whether a walk in a garden really counts as a walk in nature. I mean a garden is green all right. It has things growing in it. But a garden is as much a creation as any piece of art. I don’t want to sound like a sour puss, but I’d have thought Art in the Garden would have been a better name for the outdoor space; but names are tricky. The place is run by the Nature in Art Trust which was established in 1982 when it was called the Society for Wildlife Art of the Nations, so it’s definitely made a step in the right direction.
And in fact I had a great time strolling around between the sculptures and the teasels, but I also spent a certain amount of time agonizing about what exactly is meant by ‘nature.’
If you’ve ever pulled up a weed, trodden on an ant, or, lord knows, planted a tree, you have by definition interferred with nature. You know, just like Capability Brown
These thoughts were nothing new. I happen to live in the Stour Valley which is ‘An area of outstanding natural beauty’ (AONB – yes, I know it should be AOONB). AONBs are protected by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (CROW - yes, I know it should be CAROWA) which is all about protecting. conserving and indeed enhancing natural beauty, because obviously nature on it’s own isn’t enough.
The Stour Valley is a great place to walk, but do I really need government legislation to tell me what’s outstanding? Or what’s natural or indeed beautiful? I’d have said not.
This may be because I enjoy walking in areas that some might call areas of outstanding unnatural ugliness. That’s how we flaneurs are. And of course I don’t need the government (or anybody else) to tell me what is and isn’t ugly.
Footnote: My friend and top photographer Berris Conolly tells me that ‘Art in the Gardens’ is the name of an annual summer sale at the Botanical Gardens in Sheffield. He writes, ‘I paid for a stall in a tent one year (2008ish) and did quite well, although amazingly, because of poor security, there was a (selective) theft in the night, and they took two of mine, which is probably quite complimentary. No insurance, of course.’
