When I hear the term “sculpture park”, I usually reach for some kind of weapon. But Jupiter Artland is different. “We don’t do shop and plonk” says Nicky Wilson who with her husband Robert, founded Jupiter in 2009 around their family home just outside Edinburgh.
Now there are more than 40 bespoke pieces by the likes of Phyllida Barlow, Tracey Emin, Cornelia Parker, Pablo Bronstein and Tracey Emin, all permanently set around a turreted Jacobean former hunting lodge in 150 acres of Scottish countryside. There’s also an entire Charles Jencks landscape and a Joanna Vasconcellos swimming pool created on a leyline, all of which are complemented by a rolling programme of temporary exhibitions in the house’s ballroom and former stables.
But what makes this place so exceptional is how the ambitions of Jupiter run wider and deeper than simply acquiring and showing art—however special these works may be.
“Our mission is to engage directly with every single child in Scotland,” Wilson states. “Education and outreach are at the heart of our ethos. I want every child to experience the transformative power of art.” To this end, Jupiter’s learning programme is one of the largest in Scotland with a plethora of educational initiatives and free school visits taking place during Jupiter’s opening months. Importantly these activities also extend to targeted locations throughout Scotland all year round.
Case in point is the Jupiter + commissioning programme, which brings top quality contemporary art directly into Scottish communities by temporarily housing public art commissions in disused buildings which are always accompanied by free, specially tailored learning programmes.
Jupiter + started three years ago with Glasgow based artist Rachel Maclean occupying an empty shop in Perth High Street with her warped, lurid version of a toyshop, while three storeys of space upstairs housed a creative programme targeted especially for 15 to 25 year olds. A year later Maclean’s satirical mash up of pop culture and fairytale fantasy came to a former butcher’s shop in the centre of Ayr and from 7 September to 31 December, the most recent iteration of Jupiter + fills a shop space at 18 High Street Paisley. Here it will take the form of an entire room lined with dark chocolate by Anya Gallaccio, who was born in Paisley and whose amethyst-encrusted grotto has been in situ at Jupiter Artland since 2012. (Gallaccio’s major retrospective also opens at Turner Contemporary in Margate on 28 September). “Anya thinks about material in a magical alchemical manner,” Wilson says. “This is the stuff that ignites imagination and allows for freedom of thought—we are looking forward to harnessing this power for the young people of Paisley”
A belief in the power of art when extended beyond the gallery is echoed by Laura Aldridge, who is currently showing at Jupiter Artland and who is also making a significant impact on the communities of Paisley. Aldridge’s dramatic fountain of giant stacked ceramic snail shells is Jupiter’s most recent acquisition, installed in the formal garden. Meanwhile, until 29 September the stable galleries are housing her solo show Lawnmower which, with its array of wall mounted sculptural lights incorporating ceramics and hand dyed textiles, and its trio of richly adorned love seats, fuses the spirit of a domestic sitting room with a theatrical mise-en-scene. This most gregarious of installations also comprises text and video works made with the involvement of a wider artistic community, most notably Juliana Capes, Morwenna Kearsley and Sarah McFadyen, with Aldridge seeing the show as evidence of a life lived creatively amongst friends and collaborators.
“I don’t think of myself as having a socially engaged practice, but I am a socially engaged artist—there’s a difference.” Aldridge declares. “I don’t want to make work that’s specifically about being socially engaged, but I also don’t want to underestimate how important all these things are to how I work.”
Sculpture House in Paisley
© Open Aye
Striking evidence of this community spirit comes in the form of Sculpture House, the radical studio-cum-community workshop which Aldridge and two fellow artists, James Rigler and Nick Evans, set up two years ago in the low-income Ferguslie Park district of Paisley. This capacious but dilapidated council-owned Victorian villa has been transformed by the artist trio into studios for themselves and four other artist occupants, as well now offering myriad activities, spaces and facilities for the surrounding population. These range from after school clubs, designated Messy Materials and early Learners Clay workshops, a dye garden, and much more.
To achieve this Aldridge and her fellow Sculpture House artists have struck an innovative deal with Renfrewshire council whereby, instead of paying rent they offer themselves as in-kind ‘value,’ providing creative activities for the surrounding population, pooling facilities and refurbishing and maintaining the building as a welcoming and inspirational environment for the locals as well as themselves. “We had this feeling that there had to be an alternative to taking loads of other jobs in order to be able to pay the landlords of expensive studios,” says Aldridge. “We wanted to try and have a different model of practice.”
“Some people get everything they need from being on their own in their studio all day, making things that they just sell to rich people,” adds Rigler. “But it wasn’t working for us, we weren’t happy.”
A year on, while Aldridge acknowledges that “we’re still feeling our way and working out where we are needed”, this radical new model seems to be working to everyone’s benefit. As Rigler says, “it’s great to be commuting from your studio to your job and it’s just across the hall”. Both agree that the common art world view that education and community activites are secondary to selling work is “unhealthy and old fashioned”.
When, as they frequently do, the Sculpture House artists receive a commission or a sale, the benefit gets ploughed back in ways beyond the fiscal. “We are now getting approached to run projects, we are consulting architects, pooling our contacts, and wherever possible working with local specialists” says Aldridge. Meanwhile the place hums with intergenerational activity from schools, pensioners and anyone who needs its services. As it becomes refurbished, Sculpture House is also turning into an artwork in its own right with its resident artist and guest users creating encaustic doorstep tiles, a stained glass porch and even the mugs in the kitchen.
“Artists Make a Better World” declares the sign just inside Sculpture House’s front door. Right now, whether in Ferguslie Park, Paisley High Street, or in the rolling acres of Jupiter Artland, this is undoubtedly the case.
