I became a herbalist in my 20s under its lingering spell, charmed by the litanies of plant names – woody nightshade, hawkweed, restharrow – interspersed with fragments from old herbals, Apuleius and Gerard on the properties of the sorcerer’s violet and the arum lily. When I came to write my first book, To the River, it was Jarman’s voice I sought to channel. During the 1980s, Jarman was a leading campaigner against Clause 28, which sought to ban the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools. He also worked to raise awareness of AIDS. His artistic practice in the early 1980s reflected these commitments, especially in The Angelic Conversation (1985), a film in which the imagery is accompanied by Judi Dench's voice reciting Shakespeare's sonnets.

And in a new commission, responding to the first gardening book that a young Derek Jarman was given, filmmaker Sarah Wood has collaborated with Prospect Cottage’s gardener Jonny Bruce on Beautiful Flowers and How to Grow Them (2021), distilling Jarman’s spirit via a questioning of how best to flourish in a hostile environment. as last year, so this; i haven't been able to settle on a single book all march, have had spring buzzing around my brain, just waiting & cleaning & dreaming of gardens? Bryan Ferry – "Windswept" ". mvdbase.com. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 . Retrieved 15 July 2012. There they are at the edge of the lakeside, standing to attention, making a splash — no blushing violets these, and not in ones or twos but hundreds, proud regiments marching in the summer, with clash of cymbals and rolling drums. Here comes June. Glorious, colourful June. The exhibition specifically focuses on his lifelong passion for plants, the human body, the landscape and the greater environment, as evidenced in the living artwork that is Prospect Cottage and its shingle garden in Dungeness, Kent. Created between 1987 and 1994, the house and garden continue Jarman’s legacy into the 21st century as a kind of barometer of the deep past and the near future.

Author

The early 1980s saw Jarman return to painting after having focused primarily on film in the previous decade. His paintings of this era incorporated imagery from nineteenth-century male nude photography, religious iconography, art historical ephemera, and sexual scenes. He displayed his paintings in a solo exhibition in 1982, which he titled After the Final Academy. Two years later the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London hosted a retrospective of Jarman's paintings, which was staged in tandem with the release of the artist's autobiography, Dancing Ledge. The text details the first 40 years of Jarman's life and discusses London's gay scene at length. But as he explained to the painter Maggi Hambling, his interests did not entirely square with those of a stately Victorian naturalist. “Ah, I understand completely,” she replied. “You’ve discovered modern nature.” The definition was ideal, encompassing both reeling nights cruising on Hampstead Heath and the waking nightmare of HIV infection. His capacity to write honestly about sex and death makes much contemporary nature writing seem prissy and anaemic. Jim Ellis, Derek Jarman's Angelic Conversations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), pp. 200–1. Originaly broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2019, Rupert Everett narrating Modern Nature will be available to listen to in full until September 2020.

At first glance, Dungeness was hardly a promising location for a besotted plantsman. It was a microclimate of extremes, plagued by drought, gales and leaf-scorching salt. In this stony desert, overlooked by a looming nuclear power station, Jarman set about conjuring an unlikely oasis. Like all his projects, it was done by hand and on a shoestring budget. Hauling manure, digging holes in the shingle, he cajoled old roses and fig trees into bloom with the same irrepressible charm he used on actors. Derek Jarman's last film, Blue, is the artist's most somber and direct reflection on his personal battle with AIDS. The film features a single shot of the color blue, a reference to the monochrome blue paintings of the French painter Yves Klein. Klein had famously created and trademarked a pigment of blue, which he had titled International Klein Blue. Jarman had first come across Klein's work in 1974 and had "continued to develop ideas surrounding 'a blue film'" since, writes film critic Paul Attard. When he finally made the film, the color came to stand for his declining eye conditions, which had caused a blue tint to descend on his visual field to the point of total obfuscation of his surroundings. For the film's voiceover, he wrote: My eyes sting from the drops / The infection has halted / The flash leaves / Scarlet after image / Of the blood vessels in my eye. Jarman also directed the 1989 tour by the UK duo Pet Shop Boys. By pop concert standards this was a highly theatrical event with costume and specially shot films accompanying the individual songs. Jarman was the stage director of Sylvano Bussotti's opera L'Ispirazione, first staged in Florence in 1988.

Derek Jarman's Modern Nature

Facing an uncertain future, Jarman found solace in nature, growing all manner of plants. Some perished beneath wind and sea-spray while others flourished, creating brilliant, unexpected beauty in the wilderness.

Modern nature is a moving account of both the bleak and beauty of life -especially during the 80/90’s, a time filled with such unforgiving circumstance. Jarman moved to the Kent coast of England in 1987, following his HIV-positive diagnosis. With the money he received after his father's death, Jarman bought a former fisherman's cottage called Prospect Cottage, on Dungeness Beach. On its grounds, Jarman cultivated a garden that would come to be a lasting legacy. One wall of the cottage is painted with John Donne's poem "The Sun Rising." It begins: Busy old food, unruly Sun/Why dost thou thus/Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? The gardens spread out from around the cottage, a mixture of plants and sculptures that were mostly assembled from driftwood. It was "as much a metaphor for memory and hope as it was earth and plants," writes art critic Jennifer Higgie. As if defiant against his terminal diagnosis, Jarman selected "plants that could withstand the shingle and the fierce salty winds" of the English Channel. They bloomed beautifully, colorful and vibrant. Niall Richardson, 'The Queer Cinema of Derek Jarman: Critical and Cultural Readings' (I.B. Tauris, 2009) Modern Nature is Jarman’s chronicle of life in his remote cottage on the barren coast of Dungeness in the years after his HIV diagnosis. Facing an uncertain future, Jarman found solace in nature, growing all manner of plants. Some perished beneath wind and sea-spray while others flourished, creating brilliant, unexpected beauty in the wilderness. My garden is a memorial, each circular bed a dial and a true lover’s knot — planted with lavender, helichryssum and santolina.

Recently Added

John Hansard Gallery is pleased to present Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature, curated with author Philip Hoare. Berlinale: 1986 Prize Winners". berlinale.de. Archived from the original on 22 March 2016 . Retrieved 15 January 2011.