Penelope Sexton is a curator at Compton Verney art gallery in Warwickshire, where
she has collaborated with two artists to produce The Clearing, a vision-of-the-future encampment and living artwork in the house’s surrounding parkland, which was designed by the 18th-century landscape architect Capability Brown.
How did The Clearing come about?
Part of the Heritage Lottery Fund project to restore the landscape around Compton Verney involved creating an “eye-catcher” or folly in the spirit of Capability Brown. We chose artists Alex Hartley and Tom James to come up with an idea, which has resulted in them making a geodesic dome out of scrap metal.
It sits opposite the mansion house, among manicured lawns, but despite its utopian setting, the dome interrogates a less uplifting idea – Hartley’s and James’s project explores how we might live in a post- apocalyptic world when all the fossil fuels have run out.
How are you involving people in the project? We’ve been advertising for “caretakers” – members of the public to come and live off-grid for a week each, before the project ends on 17 December.
Participants will be taught how to fend for themselves via a series of workshops covering everything from building fires and digging toilets, brewing mead to making wind turbines and establishing democracies. Members of the public can sign up to single workshops at a small price too. The dome contains a wood-burning stove, a bed and a desk, and there are chickens and an outdoor shower.
What do you do when you’re not curating?
I’m semi-retired from serious marathon running; I’ve competed in London, Berlin, Paris and New York and I’ve also played Segway polo for England. It’s quite a dangerous sport because those machines travel at 12mph, which is alarming when one’s coming straight at you. Two years ago, I played in the world championships in Germany – in one game,
we were up against the Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, who’s really into the sport.
It’s big among techie folk.
Do you fancy a stint in the dome?
I desperately want to have a go, and feel, as curator, that it’s only right that I should. It must get really interesting at night when everyone’s gone home and you’re basically alone in the woods. Very attractive woods, mind you, but woods nonetheless.
she has collaborated with two artists to produce The Clearing, a vision-of-the-future encampment and living artwork in the house’s surrounding parkland, which was designed by the 18th-century landscape architect Capability Brown.
How did The Clearing come about?
Part of the Heritage Lottery Fund project to restore the landscape around Compton Verney involved creating an “eye-catcher” or folly in the spirit of Capability Brown. We chose artists Alex Hartley and Tom James to come up with an idea, which has resulted in them making a geodesic dome out of scrap metal.
It sits opposite the mansion house, among manicured lawns, but despite its utopian setting, the dome interrogates a less uplifting idea – Hartley’s and James’s project explores how we might live in a post- apocalyptic world when all the fossil fuels have run out.
How are you involving people in the project? We’ve been advertising for “caretakers” – members of the public to come and live off-grid for a week each, before the project ends on 17 December.
Participants will be taught how to fend for themselves via a series of workshops covering everything from building fires and digging toilets, brewing mead to making wind turbines and establishing democracies. Members of the public can sign up to single workshops at a small price too. The dome contains a wood-burning stove, a bed and a desk, and there are chickens and an outdoor shower.
What do you do when you’re not curating?
I’m semi-retired from serious marathon running; I’ve competed in London, Berlin, Paris and New York and I’ve also played Segway polo for England. It’s quite a dangerous sport because those machines travel at 12mph, which is alarming when one’s coming straight at you. Two years ago, I played in the world championships in Germany – in one game,
we were up against the Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, who’s really into the sport.
It’s big among techie folk.
Do you fancy a stint in the dome?
I desperately want to have a go, and feel, as curator, that it’s only right that I should. It must get really interesting at night when everyone’s gone home and you’re basically alone in the woods. Very attractive woods, mind you, but woods nonetheless.
