A VISIT TO JUPITER AND BEYOND
Date Posted: 18th July 2024
I’ve just returned from a trip to Jupiter - no, not the planet - that would take a bit longer! I mean Jupiter Artland outside Edinburgh. It is a 100 acre contemporary sculpture park which was created in 2009 by Nicky and Robert Wilson - a philanthropic husband and wife who had great visions on a large scale and were willing to take risks and achieve their ambition to show sculpture in a natural setting.
I don’t know why it has taken me so long to visit this inspiring place (Maybe life and covid?) but I will be back again soon as it is developing all the time. The largest piece CELLS OF LIFE is the first thing you see when you arrive; It took landscape sculptor Charles Jencks 8 years to create these sculpted grassy mounds reflecting in the deep dark still pools (the mowing must be a nightmare!) The signpost pointing into the sky reminds us that the other Jupiter 893 – 964 million kilometres (varying with movements of planets) is somewhere up there. The exhibits in this complex site are sometimes hard to find – the pleasure and reward is in the search and the surprise factor when discovered. (It reminded me of the day I spent in the Kroller-Muller museum in the Netherlands where you could hop on a yellow bike to get round.) Works by Gormley, Kapoor, Emin, Goldsworthy, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Marc Quinn and Cornelia Parker are installed in the Jupiter woodlands among other works by both famous and emerging artists. It changes all the time. I was transfixed by Weeping girls by Laura Ford – such outpouring of grief and melancholy it made me shed a tear too. A translation of Jupiter in Greek means happiness, well being. Whatever it means I want to go again and have some more of it.
In my Edinburgh art-fest visit I enjoyed the beautiful new extension to the Scottish Royal Academy which is a new wing with superb access from Princes Street Gardens with an underground link to both austere side-by-side galleries which have always been separate until now. I was pleased to see several works by Anne Redpath, the first Scottish female academician, in both. Her most famous work, Red Slippers and Indian Rug, has at last revealed a secret. She had painted a landscape on the other side of the canvas which has rarely been seen and is now shown skilfully framed to show both sides in a glass box which is joyous.
There is a wonderful Redpath oil, (Harmony in Red), 2 screenprints and many hand painted letters and postcards in Keswick museum’s store which were left to the museum almost 30 years ago by a Keswick collector Rosalie Charlton in good faith that it would give the people of Keswick and beyond the pleasure it had given her for over 50 years hanging over her fireplace in Borrowdale. It has only once seen the light of day when it travelled to an exhibition of the artists work in The Borders. You can ask to see this beautiful Redpath collection on request along with a little booklet I wrote and printed to tell the story and draw attention to it and to Rosalie. It has never been hung in Keswick museum or in Cumbria. It is an iconic piece.
While In Edinburgh I went to see master printmaker Robert Adam who is a Kelly enthusiast and the printer of Percy Kelly’s etching plates. We have used about half of the etching plates I discovered under Kelly’s printing press after his death in 1993. These posthumous original prints have been popular - they were centre of attention and raised a lot of funds in this year’s exhibition at Theatre by the Lake. (particularly Stormy Day, Cockermouth, Farmhouse near Thirlmere, Newlands Church and a few others which have now sold out their edition of 75 (their plates are now cancelled so they will never print any more.) Robert is just working on an edition of Kirkgate, Cockermouth - a plate that has never been printed or seen before - I will let you know when it is ready. I may have to go to Edinburgh again to pick it up. Yippee. Jupiter Artland, Graal Press here I come!
Can’t go without a mention of TBTL’s latest performance Brassed Off. It is so relevant to real life and not to be missed. It’s about a colliery band and the miners strike accompanied by a superlative brass band filled out by Penrith’s band and featuring local children as a miner’s family. It ends Saturday 27th July – don’t miss it.