Vita Sackville-West, The Garden, 1946 | I Dreamed a Dream the Other...

The Exhibition

I Dreamed A Dream The Other Night
Curated by Elif Kamisli

British Council’s "Museum Without Walls" presents a group exhibition I Dreamed A Dream The Other Night. Titled after the 16th century Scottish lament "Lowlands Away", the exhibition focuses on two strong traditions in British Art, landscape and sculpture, and features the work of Vanessa Bell, David Muirhead Bone, Eveleen Buckton, Charles Cheston, Duncan Grant, Wilfred Fairclough, Richard Long, Paul Nash, Susan Philipsz, Gwendolen Raverat, Philip Wilson Steer and Alfred Thornton from British Council Collection.

This exhibition was born from a simple curiosity: how do people in different periods of time connect with nature when faced with a feeling of ephemerality, either as a result of the profound changes surrounding them or due to an idiosyncratic questioning of the relationship between loss and time? The beauty embedded in nature rests on her simple yet powerful harmony that persists despite all the disasters with which she is faced. Bombs fall, loved ones pass away and yet rivers continue to flow and flowers to blossom with every breaking day, as if nothing has happened. Much like a resilient hero always capable of moving forward with their adventures, nature reminds us of the urge to stand still even if the world falls apart. Maurice Blanchot started his book "The Writing of the Disaster" (1980) with these words: “The disaster ruins everything, all the while leaving everything intact. It does not touch anyone in particular; ‘I’ am not threatened by it, but spared, left aside. (…) We are on the edge of disaster without being able to situate it in the future: it is rather always already past, and yet we are on the edge or under the threat, all formulations which would imply the future…” I Dreamed A Dream The Other Night invites its visitors to contemplate on the ideas of ‘timelessness’ and ‘disasters’ while reinterpreting nature as a shelter for vulnerable souls in a moment where past dissolves into future and future dissolves into today.

The exhibition begins with a series of landscape drawings, a painting and an etching produced by artists who were born into a transition period when humanity in the West witnessed dramatic changes. The rise of industrial machines, the extoling of science and consequent questioning of religion, as well as the determined belief in constant progress, trapped the souls of ordinary people in a hopeless stillness. The artists featured in the exhibition were wandering in nature, haunted by the destruction of world wars as their brushstrokes depicted flourishing green life. Despite the storms in their souls, they walked on lands and sought for hope in green hills, colourful flowers, dark trees and snowy mountains. Presented on the walls surrounding the exhibition space, these beautiful works create an invisible shield inviting visitors to re-consider landscape as a response to materialism and to contemplate how these artists turned to nature for solace and inspiration in a moment of mass destruction and social transformation. This section includes the works by Vanessa Bell, David Muirhead Bone, Eveleen Buckton, Charles Cheston, Duncan Grant, Wilfred Fairclough, Paul Nash, Gwendolen Raverat, Philip Wilson Steer and Alfred Thornton.

Richard Long’s sculptural installations indicate a significant exploration which brings a new interpretation to the relationship between land and nature in his artistic practice that now spans almost half a century. His works represent the basic forms of nature with collected materials during his walking routes and gives a glimpse of his relationship between time and place. With "Spring Circle" (1992), Long marks a walk through north Cornwall by arranging chunks of greenish-blue slate in a circle on the floor. His physical traces on land are destined to disappear in a short period of time, however an aura derived from his knowledge and memories infuses his sculptures and wall drawings. Long’s act of walking as a graceful gesture seeks a harmony with the universe; walking as a meditative, personal and un-recordable exercise in the slowness of time finds an embodiment in the exhibition space through his inimitable style.

For her sculpture in sound "Lowlands" (2008), Susan Philipsz recorded three versions of "Lowlands Away" – a Scottish lament about a man drowned at sea who returns to tell his lover of his death. As if it were a spirit on a journey from 5 centuries ago, this work fills the exhibition space; it creates invisible bonds between the other works and attempts to drag the visitors into a dreamy land where impossible becomes possible and all disasters eventually disappear. Philipsz’s untrained and unaccompanied voice creates an intimacy while the lyrics give a powerful feeling of nostalgia. "Lowlands" becomes the essence of this exhibition which hopes to create a constellation of different souls who are troubled with the same questions about nature.

Press Release

A Digital Exhibition Experience from the British Council
First Time Exhibiting the "Museum Without Walls" in Turkey

British Council, with the aim of enabling new experiences to the art lovers by transferring the arts to the digital world, introduces the first digital art exhibition at http://dreamexhibition.britishcouncil.org.tr/ The exhibition curated by Elif Kamışlı with selected works from the British Council Collection defined as the 'Museum Without Walls,' will excite not only the art lovers, but also those who wish to have a unique digital experience. The exhibition is comprised of a selection from two strong traditions in British art, landscape and sculpture and is going to be open to visit from 7 March onwards.

The digital platform is specifically commissioned for this project and designed as a real exhibition space. The exhibition area offers the visitors the freedom to walk around and explore the galleries without limitations in time or physical access. The visitors have access to textual, visual or audio information about the artworks and artists. This way, the exhibition space allows the visitors to play an active role in designing their experience with their own choices and create their very own, unique experience.

I Dreamed a Dream the Other Night

The first guest of this new digital exhibition space is the curator Elif Kamışlı with her exhibition 'I Dreamed a Dream the Other Night' she developed out of the British Council Collection.

The exhibition focuses on the two strong traditions in British art, landscape and sculpture with three different parts. The first part consists of the small size landscape paintings, etchings and drawings from artists such as Charles Cheston, Philip Connard, Duncan Grant, Henry Moore, Gwendolen Raverat and Alfred Thornton. These impressive works reflects these artists' perspective on nature at times where the history witnessed rapid and sharp changes. The second part presents a digital modelling based on Richard Long's Spring Circle (1992) which conveys the artist's modest yet powerful language and unifies the land art with sculpture. The third part displays the sound installation by one of the most interesting, living artists, Susan Philipsz, where she used her own voice to record three different versions of a 16th century Scottish lament.

These three parts create a strong dialogue through these extraordinary works which draws attention to the British art's evolution as well as displaying the richness of the British Council Collection.

"British Council invites the art enthusiasts to experience art on a digital exhibition site without any physical limits."

The UK's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities, the British Council's Art Director Esra Aysun pointed out the fact that such a digital platform is being launched for the first in Turkey and in the world and said "British Council always aims to offer new works, enriching experiences and new approaches that is inspired by the rich cultural and artistic variety of the UK for the artists, creative professionals and art enthusiasts from all around Turkey. Today, we are excited to have launched a brand new digital exhibition site and created new possibility of communication, as we are seeking new means to communication through arts. This digital exhibition area without physical limits makes the visitors meet the UK's cultural power and diversity."

The exhibition can be accessed through any desktop or mobile devices with internet connection.

Notes to Editor

Who is Elif Kamışlı?

Elif Kamışlı has been working as the exhibition coordinator of the Istanbul Biennial since June 2014. She is currently working with the biennial curators Ingar Dragset and Michael Elmgreen of the 15th Istanbul Biennial. Having worked with many establishments including biennials, museums, and private art galleries so far in her career, Kamışlı says that each such experience helped her understand the inner workings of different organisational structures, and internalise the importance of teamwork.

Elif Kamışlı, after being selected for the British Council's Curatorial Residency Programme in 2016, prepared the 'I Dreamed a Dream the Other Night' exhibition for the British Council Collection.

Curatorial Residency Programme

The British Council offered an opportunity for local curators to go to London and develop an exhibition proposal from the British Council Collection while participating in the Creating Contemporary Art Exhibitions course at the Whitechapel Gallery within the International Museum Academy: UK 2016 developed by the British Council Cultural Skills Unit team.

This year the 'Curatorial Residency Programme' took place between 21 August and 28 August 2016 in London, United Kingdom with its strong culture in visual and contemporary arts.

'I Dreamed a Dream the Other Night' can be visited at http://dreamexhibition.britishcouncil.org.tr/ for a year.

For detailed information for press:
arts.info@britishcouncil.org.tr
90 212 355 56 43

VITA SACKVILLE-WEST

THE GARDEN, 1946

The Artist
The Poem
More Information

The Artist
Vita Sackville-West was an English poet, novelist and gardener. She was famous for her exuberant aristocratic life, her strong marriage to Harold Nicolson, her passionate relationships with women and her gardens at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent. Sackville-West's long narrative poem, "The Land", won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927, and her "Collected Poems" won the prize again in 1933. Her best-known novels are "The Edwardians" (1930) and "All Passion Spent" (1931). In 1946 Sackville-West was made a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. The following year she began a weekly column in the Observer called "In Your Garden". In 1948 she became a founder member of the National Trust's garden committee. Sissinghurst Castle is now owned by the National Trust and the garden Vita Sackville-West created there is open to the public. It is one of the most visited gardens in England.

The Work
The Garden
Small pleasures must correct great tragedies,
Therefore of gardens in the midst of war
I boldly tell. Once of the noble land
I dared to pull the organ-stops, the deep
Notes of the bass, the diapason's range
Of rich rotation, yielding crop by crop;
Of season after season as the wheel
Turned cyclic in the grooves and groves of time;
I told the classic tools, the plough, the scythe,
In husbandry's important ritual,
But now of agriculture's little brother
I touch the pretty treble, pluck the string,
Making the necklace of a gardener's year,
A gardener's job, for better or for worse
Strung all too easily in beads of verse.
No strong no ruthless plough-share cutting clods,
No harrow toothed as the saurian jaws,
Shall tear or comb my sward of garden theme,
But smaller spade and hoe and lowly trowel
And ungloved fingers with their certain touch.
(Delicate are the tools of gardener's craft,
Like a fine woman next a ploughboy set,
But none more delicate than gloveless hand,
That roaming lover of the potting-shed,
That lover soft and tentative, that lover
Desired and seldom found, green-fingered lover
Who scorned to take a woman to his bed.)
So to such small occasions am I fallen,
And in the midst of war,
(Heroic days, when all the pocket folk
Were grabbed and shaken by a larger hand
And lived as they had never lived before
Upon a plane they could not understand
And gasping breathed an atmosphere too rare,
But took it quickly as their native air,
Such big events
That from the slowly opening fount of time
Dripped from the leaky faucet of our days,)
I tried to hold the courage of my ways
In that which might endure,
Daring to find a world in a lost world,
A little world, a little perfect world,
With owlet vision in a blinding time,
And wrote and thought and spoke
These lines, these modest lines, almost demure,
What time the corn still stood in sheaves,
What time the oak
Renewed the million dapple of her leaves.
Yet shall the garden with the state of war
Aptly contrast, a miniature endeavour
To hold the graces and the courtesies
Against a horrid wilderness. The civil
Ever opposed the rude, as centuries'
Slow progress laboured forward, then the check,
Then the slow uphill climb again, the slide
Back to the pit, the climb out of the pit,
Advance, relapse, advance, relapse, advance,
Regular as the measure of a dance;
So does the gardener in little way
Maintain the bastion of his opposition
And by a symbol keep civility;
So does the brave man strive
To keep enjoyment in his breast alive
When all is dark and even in the heart
Of beauty feeds the pallid worm of death.
Much toil, much care, much love and many years
Went to the slow reward; a grudging soil
Enriched or lightened following its needs:
Potash and compost, stable-dung, blood, bones,
Spent hops in jade-green sacks, the auburn leaves
Rotted and rich, the wood-ash from the hearth
For sticky clay; all to a second use
Turned in a natural economy,
And many a robin perched on many a sod
Watched double-trenching for his benefit
Through the companionable russet days,
But only knew the digger turned the worm
For him, and had no foresight of the frost
Later to serve the digger and his clod
Through winter months, for limitations rule
Robins and men about their worms and wars,
The robin's territory; and man's God.
But the good gardener with eyes on ground
(Lifted towards the sunset as he scrapes
His tools at day's end, looks into the west,
Examining the calm or angry sky
To reckon next day's chance of fair or ill,
Of labour or of idleness enforced,)
Sees only what he sees, oh happy he!
Makes his small plot his arbiter, his bourn,
Being too lightly built to suffer pain
That's unremitting, pain of broken love,
Or pain of war that tears too red a hole.
He will endure his trials willy-nilly,
The plaguy wind, the cold, the drought, the rain,
All, to his mind, ill-timed and in excess,
But finds a sanctuary. He knows, he knows
The disappointments, the discomfitures,
The waste, the dash of hopes, the sweet surprise
Sprung in forgotten corner; knows the loss,
Attempts defeated, optimism balked;
He may not pause to lean upon his spade,
And even in the interruption brought
By friends, he will not stroll
At simple ease, but ever dart his eyes
Noticing faults, and feeling fingers twitch,
Eager to cut, to tie, correct, promote,
Sees all shortcomings with the stranger's eye,
An absent-minded host with inward fret,
The most dissatisfied of men, whose hope
Outran achievement and is leading yet.
(Still there are moments when the shadows fall
And the low sea of flowers, wave on wave,
Spreads to the pathway from the rosy wall
Saying in coloured silence, "Take our all;
You gave to us, and back to you we gave.
"You dreamed us, and we made your dream come true.
We are your vision, here made manifest.
You sowed us, and obediently we grew,
But, sowing us, you sowed more than you knew
And something not ourselves has done the rest.")
Unlike the husbandman who sets his field
And knows his reckoned crop will come to birth
Varying but a little in its yield
After the necessary months ensealed
Within the good the generative earth,
The gardener half artist must depend
On that slight chance, that touch beyond control
Which all his paper planning will transcend;
He knows his means but cannot rule his end;
He makes the body: who supplies the soul?
Sometimes, as poet feels his pencil held,
Sculptor his chisel cutting effortless,
Painter his brush behind his grasp impelled,
Unerring guidance, theory excelled,
When rare Perfection gives a rounded Yes,
So does some magic in his humbler sphere,
Some trick of Nature, slant of curious light,
Some grouped proportion, splendid or severe
In feast of Summer or the Winter sere,
Show the designer one thing wholly right.
Music from notes and poetry from verse
Grow to a consummation rare, entire,
When harmony resolves without disperse
The broken pattern of the universe
And joins the particles of our desire.
Hint of the secret synthesis that lies
So surely round some corner of our road;
That deepest canon of our faith, the prize
We look for but shall never realise;
Suspected cipher that implies a code.
Rosetta Stone of beauty come by chance
Into the testing hands of gardener's loves,
Rich hieroglyphic of significance
Only denied to our poor ignorance.
—Those orchards of Rosetta and their doves!
Should we resolve the puzzle, lose the zest,
Should we once know our last our full intent,
If all were staringly made manifest,
The mystery and the elusive quest,
Then less than ever should we be content.
The Morning Glory climbs towards the sun
As we by nature sadly born to strive
And our unending race of search to run,
Forever started, never to be won,
—And might be disappointed to arrive.

More Information
V. Sackville-West, In Your Garden. Oxenwood P., 1996
V. Sackville-West, The Garden. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014
M. Dennison, Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West. William Collins, 2015
V. Sackville-West, All Passion Spent. Vintage Classics, 2016

SUSAN PHILIPSZ

LOWLANDS, 2008

Three-channel sound installation, 8 minutes, 30 seconds
The work was digitally installed for this project with the artist’s permission.
Image: ©Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

About The Work
About The Artist
Where The Work Was Exhibited
Additional Information

About The Work
Lowlands, for which Susan Philipsz became the first sound artist to win the Turner Prize in 2010, was originally created for the Glasgow International Festival and was installed on the underside of three bridges in the city. In this piece the artist sings three parts of a sixteenth century Scottish ballad called Lowlands, a song about a man drowned at sea who returns to tell his lover of his death.

About The Artist
Susan Philipsz was born in Glasgow in 1965 and studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, and University of Ulster, Belfast. In 2000, she completed a fellowship at MoMA PS1 in New York. Recipient of the 2010 Turner Prize, the artist was also shortlisted for Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award that same year.

Philipsz's work explores the psychological and sculptural potential of sound. Using recordings, predominantly of her own voice, Philipsz creates immersive environments of architecture and song that heighten the visitor's engagement with their surroundings while provoking thoughtful introspection. The music Philipsz selects, which has ranged from sixteenth century ballads and Irish folk tunes to David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, responds specifically to the space in which the work is installed. While each piece is unique, the storylines and references are often recognisable; exploring familiar themes of loss, longing, hope and return. These universal narratives trigger personal reactions while also temporarily bridging the gaps between the individual and the collective, as well as interior and exterior spaces.

Since the mid-1990s, Philipsz's sound installations have been exhibited at many prestigious institutions and public venues around the world. In 2012, she debuted a major work at dOCUMENTA 13 entitled Study for Strings, which was later featured at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the group exhibition Soundings: A Contemporary Score (2013). In the spring of 2014, Philipsz opened a permanent installation on Governors Island in New York entitled Day is Done. Philipsz has also presented solo exhibitions at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (2014); the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh (2013); K21 Standehaus Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Dusseldorf, Germany (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2011); Aspen Art Museum in Colorado (2010-11); Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State in Columbus, OH (2009-10); Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany (2009); Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (2008) to name but a few. She also conceived installations for the 2007 Skulptur Projekte in Muenster, Germany, and for the Carnegie Museum of Art's 55th Carnegie International in 2008.

The artist's major commissions include Lowlands, her Turner Prize-winning work for Glasgow International in 2010; SURROUND ME: A Song Cycle for the City of London; a public project organized by Artangel in London (2010-11); Day is Done, a permanent installation organised by the Trust for Governors Island that opened on Governors Island in New York in the spring of 2014 and New Canaan, a project for the Grace Farms Foundation that opened in 2015.

Where The Work Was Exhibited
2016 Ghosts of Other Stories, The Model, Sligo, Ireland
2014 Haunted House, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, UK

Additional Information
D. Roelstraete and S. Philipsz, Susan Philipsz: I See A Darkness. Jarla Partilager, 2008
S. Arrhenius, K. Brown, C. Christov-Bakargiev, B. Franzen and J. Lingwood, Susan Philipsz: you Are Not Alone. Walther König, Köln, 2014
B. Bazalgette-Staples, Susan Philipsz: follow Me. Humboldt Books, 2015
T. Trummer, T. Ringborg and L. Schadler, Susan Philipsz: Night and Fog. Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2016

Lowlands, Turner Prize 10, 2010:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf-_j0H3qMQ

Public Art Fund Talks at The New School, 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTSmg4wnU4g

War Damaged Musical Instruments (Pair), Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf2YzuTDVCA

Night and Fog, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2016:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4H4iXF9Ezo

Night and Fog, installation at Jewish Cemetery, Hohenems, Austria, 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oWYG7fwKMk