When Art Shapes Nature: Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens
Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens is a quiet place where art shapes nature, and nature hosts art in a harmonious relationship. The Gardens overlook St Michael’s Mount and, in a romantic environment, trees and plant species from all over the world create a path where visitors are invited to experience serendipitous discoveries along the way.
St Michael’s Mount view. Photo by Beatrice Gallello.
“This is a garden you want to wander through and spend quiet time in, just contemplating the clever planting and dramatic landscape. There is plenty of seating and the joyful gurgling of a bubbling stream to mask any background noise. Peace, perfect peace.”
Since the acquisition in 1997 by Dr Neil Armstrong, this place has been an opportunity for him to create a statement for his passion for sculptures and nature. Alongside sub-tropical flora, the 22-acre mountainous environment is home to water lilies, dotted ponds, Cornish forest species, and contemporary site-specific artworks.
Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens is a meeting point that creates an open dialogue between nature and the works of living artists from all over the world, in which the sub-natural presence of a genius loci coordinates the unique preexistent qualities of the hill. It indicates the presence of a preexistent “genius of the place,” for which its characteristics need someone sensitive and able to enhance them rather than destroy them. As Alexander Pope, in Epistle IV, 1731, stated, “instanced in architecture and gardening, must be adapted to the genius of the place, and beauties not forced into it, but resulting from it.” [1] Following this, Dr Armstrong cross-collected sculptures and human artefacts to curate a place where nature always reigned supreme.
Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens. Photo by Beatrice Gallello.
Open to the public, Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens can be visited following a promenade that offers a variety of paths and views of the works and nature. Thus, it creates an open-air museum guided by the principle of full accessibility for all and to all.
The only long-lasting principle to respect its genius loci is the collaboration between artists and the owner, which is why he usually prefers to cooperate with living artists. For instance, Peter Randall-Page’s Slip of the Lip (2016,) which evokes botanical forms, is just one of the long-term displays visitors can discover at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens. Although this piece encourages meditation, it also arouses curiosity. Its elegant structure offers a different perspective on the components of nature. Thus, the artist focuses on the hidden tension between order and randomness that constitutes the natural world to examine the intricate systems of growth and form.
Peter Randall-Page, Slip of the Lip, 2016. Photo by Beatrice Gallello.
Alongside Randall-Page, artists including James Turrell, David Nash, and Richard Long have also created site-specific artworks that harmonise with the landscape and interact with the setting. If visitors dedicate an entire day to the gardens, they can find where these artworks are hidden. Richard Long’s Tremenheere Line (2013) is the most discreet of these site-specific artworks, for it is only visible if one is willing to reach the top of the hill. This work is surrounded by a stunning view that invites visitors to cast an eye across the woodland and bay and appreciate its elegance and simplicity.
Richard Long, Tremenheere Line, 2013. Photo by Beatrice Gallello.
Similarly, Turrell’s sculpture Twilight in Cornwall (2015) attracts only the most curious visitors. As the garden’s first permanent installation, it is clear that this treasure hunt was intended from the very beginning. One cannot help but revel in its surrounding contemplative space when in situ. Deliberately chosen, the area is optimal for visitors to admire the passing sky above, which is enveloped inside a cylindrical hollow.
The long-lasting relationship between the artist and Dr Armstrong began in 1998 when the former was scouting for a place to observe the 1999 solar eclipse. Dr Armstrong immediately recognised that the artist’s philosophy was similar and equal in its values and goals to those set at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens. Consequently, the pair collaboratively designed a sky space to engage a profound intellectual dialogue that brings the sky down so visitors may be in close contact with it.
“His philosophy is very much part of what I’ve been trying to do at Tremenheere. Something that reaches a deeper psychological interaction.”
Hence, Twilight in Cornwall is a striking elliptical domed chamber created to record the astonishing variety of colours at twilight. Watching the vapour trails and shifting cloud formations in the sky is enthralling. The emptiness of the space offers a meditative contemplation aura in which the source of light is the only material to experience the realms of perception. Anxiety, dread, tranquillity, and exhilaration are just a few of the emotions that may be found in this place.
Entrance to James Turrell, Twilight in Cornwall, 2015. Photo by Beatrice Gallello.
Hence, Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens provides a novel approach to experiencing a sculpture garden that demands modesty, respect, and openness, with an equal focus on flora, scenarios, and art. Working with plants implies flux and volatility, necessitating cooperation with forces outside the human mind, as noted by Penny Florence, Professor Emerita at The Slade School of Fine Art, in her book Thinking the Sculpture Garden: Art, Plant, Landscape (Routledge, 2020), “Thinking about art in this way is potentially revelatory. If we see ourselves as part of the same life forces as the garden and the landscape, several new possibilities open up. We are, after all, art, plants, landscape, humans, at the most basic level, matter. Carbon.” [2]
(Background) Penny Saunders, Restless Temple, 2015; (Foreground) Claire Stockings-Baker, Venus, 2019. Photo by Beatrice Gallello.
Dr Armstrong never stops his research and desire for innovation to transport and diffuse the beauty and the artistic and socio-cultural value of the place to everyone. In March 2023, he will launch a new augmented and immersive reality experience to enhance visitors’ experience and propose a cutting-edge platform inviting people to create their unique interactive adventure. Moreover, to diffuse the project to those who do not have to travel to Cornwall, Dr Armstrong announced that he would make a site-specific exhibition through augmented reality platforms and databases at the Chelsea Flower Festival in May.
Hence, visiting the in-person gardens or experiencing its augmented reality platform are multiple opportunities to perceive Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens’ art in an active mode. Both offer the chance to live the artworks, take them up, and discover their intrinsic significance. The demand is just the one for which the viewer should be and act as an active participant because everything located in the open-air space is conceived as something with which humans can interact on physical, intellectual, and emotional levels.
On the one hand, as Barbara Hepworth said, these sculptures “become a three-dimensional projection of primitive feeling: touch, texture, and hardness and warmth, evocation, and compulsion to move, live and love.” On the other hand, the landscape in which those are in “is strong - it has bones and flesh and skin and hair. It has age and history and a principle behind its evolution.” [3] Looking at the sculptures within this space, it is clear that they encapsulate both these sentiments. Ultimately they emerge from the artists’ emotions and find a new home in the natural setting that characterises Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens.
Footnotes:
Day, Alexander Pope's An Essay on Man (Epistle IV).
Florence, Thinking the Sculpture Garden: Art, Plant, Landscape.
Hammacher, Barbara Hepworth.
Beatrice Gallello
En Plein Air Editor, MADE IN BED