Graduate artist creates modern "follies"

MANCHESTER School of Art graduate Hilary Jack will be unveiling her amazing site-specific creations created specially for the National Trust this week.

Hilary, who studied for both a BA (Hons) and an MA in Fine Art at the School in 1995 and 2003 respectively, is well known for her large scale outdoor artworks and creations made by repairing and regenerating found objects.

The three pieces she has created for the National Trust, collectively referred to as the Packwood Follies, will be on display at Packwood House in Warwickshire until March 2016.

The transformation from the mundane to the extraordinary is a persistent theme within Jack’s work. For Packwood Follies, she has transformed a coppiced oak tree into an oversized hand carved four-poster bed, and a collection of salvaged faux Tudor furniture destined for landfill into a folklorish cottage and a network of miniature cabins and huts.

Fantastical follies

Jack has taken inspiration from Packwood’s original ‘Follies’ of the 1920s where short theatrical entertainments were performed in the gardens, and from the actions of Graham Baron Ash, the last private owner of Packwood who extensively restored the house in the 1900‘s. 

He created an evocation of a Tudor Mansion using reproduction and antique Tudor furniture, paneling and fireplaces rescued from other country houses that were being demolished at the time.

Jack’s contemporary reworking of the follies includes InsideOutHouse, a cottage in the Bluebell Wood constructed from found faux Tudor furniture.

Lying somewhere between a  Grimm Brothers’ witches dwelling and a simple homestead it mixes the familiar with the strange, highlighting the sense of enchantment brought about because of the duplicity of appearances at Packwood.

“A garden to dream in”

Referencing a remark by a visitor about Packwood in the 1930s “a house to dream of, a garden to dream in”, Embedded, is an oversized hand-carved, four-poster, mock Tudor bed sited in park-land.

Reminiscent of the historic beds within the mansion, and of famous beds in history, literature and The Arts, Embedded is planted with a coverlet of turf that visitors are invited to climb onto. Dwarfed by their surroundings, Embedded offers viewers a place to contemplate their place in the world and to dream.

Hive is a network of miniature cabins and huts of differing character sited within the formal gardens between the nooks and crannies of walls and bushes. 

Made from found wood from around the estate these small artworks pay homage to the secretive and seemingly magical work of the generations of gardeners who have tended the estate at Packwood.

The official launch of the Packwood Follies will take place tomorrow, July 9. For more information about the exhibition, visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk/packwood.