Inspired by Edward James’ 1937 novel, The Gardener Who Saw God and Marcel Duchamp’s Rota Reliefs, I developed a site-specific film and audio installation situated in the Old Dining Room of West Dean House, in response to materials found in the West Dean Collections and Archive. This work forms part of the Fragments & Echoes pop-up exhibition.

The installation is influenced by excerpts of James’ prose which depict the epiphanies and visions experienced by James’ protagonist, the Head Gardener, Joseph Smith. Refrains of Beethoven’s 3rd Eroica Symphony resonate in Smith’s mind, after sneaking into the grand old house under the cover of darkness. He listens to the Master’s gramophone recording whilst the elderly housekeeper, Mrs Maginnery, sleeps one sweetbriar-scented mid-summer night. Throughout the novel, James writes of the interconnectedness of all things, the Cosmos, the infinite and the infinitesimal, love, loneliness and the follies of Edwardian and interwar English society.  

The location of the Old Dining Room (described in the novel as The Old Writing Room) is documented as the place where Edward James experienced his own stress-induced hallucinations. The installation uses layered digital projections of animated found imagery from a contemporaneous astronomy encyclopaedia, and a composition of manipulated passages of the Eroica Symphony and clock chimes that can be heard ringing dissonantly throughout the house, played through multichannel speakers intended to shape and direct the sound. 

Running time: 14mins 30s

Some of the animated imagery creates a strobe effect; please take care if you are light sensitive.