Reminded of Derek Jarman and ghosts

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Dear Reader,

Yesterday I had the amazing opportunity to read pages of Derek Jarman's diaries from his time at Prospect Cottage, which are part of an exhibition called 'Phytopia' at Swansea's Glynn Vivian Art Gallery.

I have been thinking of ghosts, the ghosts of plants the hauntology of the landscape moving from death to life.

Jarman's garden on the Kent coast was of its place.


This is 'my' place - I live on the hill at this images centre




Jarman wrote passionately. He wrote of his garden, of his impending death and his beautiful life -the warmth of the sun on skin, passionate love, suffering and painful beauty.


Ghosts of Ivy

Perhaps I should not perpetuate the so called myth of the romantic artist - but Jarman was no myth.


Ghost garden slowly reincarnating




The arrangement of objects that he found on the shingle beach, arranged in cabinets were the ghosts of his authorial eye.
Cast in bronze the acanthus flower stem looked funereal - it could have been him lying in that clear casket.
















Jarman said  "If a garden isn't shaggy, forget it." I knew there was a reason I like shagginess.


Paul

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