Garden of Vanished Pleasures
I spend most of my days writing about art. From time to time, I also create it, because consuming plentiful amounts of art and culture on a daily basis often means that inspiration is difficult to keep at bay. It’s a nice problem to have, all things considered.
When inspiration last overflowed, I took the opportunity to create a series of paintings, one of which is now shortlisted for this year’s Glyndebourne Tour Art Competition. Glyndebourne, an opera house and arts centre in the heart of the Sussex countryside, is perhaps best known for its flagship event, the world-renowned Glyndebourne festival. On the theme of “Forces of Nature”, the painting is viewable via their digital exhibition.
I had very little to do with Glyndebourne before entering my piece in the competition. But as coincidence will have it, this week I was afforded the pleasure of speaking to the composer in residence at Glyndebourne, Cecilia Livingston, a friend of the Canada-UK Foundation.
Our conversation was about her recent involvement with Garden of Vanished Pleasures, a digital production inspired by the writings of the late and great Derek Jarman, an English artist, director, writer, gardener and activist whose life was cut short by complications due to HIV. Devised and directed by Tim Albery for Toronto-based production company Soundstreams, this operatic production was originally destined for the live stage, to be premiered during the 21C Music Festival at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto. It has since been adapted and optimised for digital distribution, which means audiences can access it even if they’re unable to be in Toronto in the coming weeks.
As a Canadian composer living between Toronto and London, Cecilia Livingstone exemplifies the happy coupling of the shared culture of Canada and the UK. The production Garden of Vanished Pleasures is also rich in artistic overlap between the two countries, with Cecilia’s music entwined with that of British composer Donna McKevitt to create a haunting performance exuding a quality of loss and heartache.
The production itself takes pieces from Cecilia’s archive, reworked to fit the gravity of the themes and specificities of the performers, then marrying it with Donna McKevitt’s cycle Translucence. It incorporates Derek Jarman’s poetry, which she began working on when she scored music for his final film, Blue.
Speaking about Translucence, Cecilia says, “the thing that I love about that cycle is it has this incredible, almost minimalist stillness, and yet it's also very humorous. It's really funny at times, it's heartbreaking, it's incredibly lonely and even despairing. When I listen to it, I feel like I'm seeing all these different facets of Derek Jarman as a person brought to me through the world of Donna's music.”
Whilst the production is centred on Donna’s cycle along with Cecilia’s compositions, it's also accessible to those who are not yet familiar with Derek Jarman’s works.
“There’s also an experience of wide-reaching themes,” says Cecilia. “Yes, it's about his work, and anchored in his work, but I think it becomes this much broader thing, drawing out the universal themes that run through his work.”
It’s gratifyingly poetic when inspiration comes full circle, which is the case with Garden of Vanished Pleasures for me. I have long been an avid admirer of the late Derek Jarman, so you can imagine my delight in speaking to Cecilia about this production. I knew of his work through the lens of contemporary art, and some fragments of film. Although I’ve yet to visit his storied garden by the sea in Dungeness, I knew of it well from photos and tales shared amongst the art world. Its delicate balance of flora and shale that reveals the quiet resilience of life was heavy on my mind when I conceived of my painting, Overgrowth, adding to the gentle threads of connection and coincidence between my inspirations, Cecilia’s compositions and Derek Jarman’s surprisingly resonant universality, culminating in Garden of Vanished Pleasures.
You can book tickets via Soundstream’s website.