Derek Jarman's Garden

Last Wednesday 49 of us went on a site visit to Dungeness in Kent. I hadn’t heard much about the place until the visit, but it is a favourite place for photographers and artists. There are numerous images on Flickr of the area and a current workshop on ‘Workshop on the Web’ is by Gwen Hedley who has used inspiration from the area extensively in her work.

It was a gloriously sunny day. We worked in small groups with the brief to make a structure at least a metre high from debris found on the shingle beach. It is the largest area of shingle in Europe and also a Nature Reserve. We also had to take at least 10 photos and make 10 drawings/ sketches. It was all a bit of a rush with no time to really get the atmosphere of the place, but as far as working together and achieving some kind of an outcome it was successful. The topic for the work which will continue over the next weeks is Reuse.
We had the chance to visit the garden of Derek Jarman,artist and Film Producer, at Prospect Cottage. He spent his final years there and used rusted machinery parts and bits of weathered wood to fashion a garden in the flat shingle surrounding his fisherman's cottage.