Locating glass panel paintings in a new environment changes the work – it adapts to its environment and mingles with its surroundings.
This opportunity was afforded me last week when I installed ‘Station’ in the expansive grounds of Lacock Abbey for their Winter Exhibition,
Reflections of Winter ‘Frozen World’.
Horizons in the paintings and the actual landscape coincidentally lined themselves up and the caught image of the central figure is opposite the window from which WIlliam Henry Fox Talbot took the first photographic negative.
The images were actually drawn from photographs I took in Paddington Station of anonymous travellers crossing back and forth over the shiny floor of the station forecourt
Lacock Abbey was founded in 1232 and was used as an Augustinian nunnery until 1539 and the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII.
Parts of the nunnery, including the cloisters, chapter house and sacristy, were preserved when the building was converted into a private residence in 1550.
The owner, Sir William Sharington, had travelled in Italy and he introduced the new Italian architecture to Tudor England.
Sir William died childless in 1553 and the abbey was inherited by his niece Mrs John Talbot.
A have a patch of it for myself briefly ……. it is beautiful and peaceful.