- Venue
- Crookhall
- Location
- North East England
I needn’t have gone within the castle wide stone walls of Crookhall though I was glad I did. I heard a lecturer of cosmic physics open the event – it was an unusual connection, a pleasant conjunction of imagination on earth and in the heavens. Naturally, he spoke of the big bang and there we stood looking up to the minstrel’s gallery from the rustic dining room with no chairs just a candelabra, rows of modern egg oval faces smiling and clapping gently eager for the reminders we feel daily but rush by. There might have been other universes created before or with the big bang…and now an Indian dancer with her long black plait tied to the back of her red dress, flowing skirt, red trousers hugging shins and bells stamping her bare brown feet on the stone floor. She’s in another place, where Hindi women’s love of the mischievous Krishna see annoyances as the presence of the god. Not needing to care too much about the world of things as our hearts entwined with imagination crave fantastic truths…so comes the unspoken invitation to enter the garden…drizzling so softly with specklets of droplets like a veil permanently hung in the humid green air outside the house. We can walk along whichever path we choose – small loose stones beneath our sandals in the walled garden and an exhaust pipe painted like a witch’s sock appears on the left by the wall like the sudden appearance of a door perhaps to another world.There are cream china nests cupped in the low forks of trees and we all sigh at the huge cobweb of Halloween nylon – it’s so much better in the garden – these other worlds, these strange openings, if one was to go in, by sitting down and enjoying and thinking I’m sure one could go in to one of these doors of art, but for now with the veil we walk through, we could come again on a dry day…and we can walk across this small, natural universe…and there is Mark Gibson’s family of concrete heads with spindly legs nestled like mushrooms under the umbrellas of the dwarf trees. Across the brow of the miniature hill wet grass soaking my toes maybe you could see all the little towns surrounding these ancient gardens…but first the apple tree has sprouted glorious giant balls of brightly coloured funneled flowers – I do go close and see they are plastic cups, but I care not, I step back, back into the beautiful dream where waxed paper lilies blue, turquoise, pink, purple float in the silent green lily pond, back to the dilapidated tree house, danger keep out I wouldn’t go in, but it is fitting, an accidental left over entrance to somewhere else. There are transparent plastic clothes sprinkled with shiny raindrops, overalls, bloomers clothes with plastic doilies for lacey hems – and in the misty veil the vague white outlines of plastic clothes hang in midair like the ghost inside Crookhall.Some sculptures were like fake doors in a hall of mirrors, they didn’t have an aura, placed in the garden unhappily but these were few. A coiled and carved wood piece, near a bench too, has calmness and looked as sculpture should look as we’ve come to know it over the years, very pleasing, but it stood out as strange – the door that now led nowhere – like it was boarded up, while the black phallic object though ancient was still useable adorned with it’s paint splattered messiness – well – there are many other universe’s to consider so I meander past the loudly coloured torso which I’d voted for in the People’s prize one two years ago how time flies many of these creative doors to other worlds may last three four years five twenty why not ….others cling to life comatose…I catch a glimpse of the blue trail through a glass window following the path leaving behind that space of ten to the power of minus forty three before the big bang when unknown worlds could have been created that moment we carry in our yearning hearts.
