RGB Blue - The Blue of Distance

RGB:Blue

The Blue of Distance considers Gertrude Jekyll’s use of colour, imagination and landscape at Hestercombe. Drawing on Rebecca Solnit’s essay of the same name, Lizzie uses cyanotypes to connect blue-flowered plants from Jekyll’s designs to their global origins, reflecting on longing, Empire, plant collecting, and the cultural meanings of distance and blue light.

This is the final exhibition of Lizzie’s RGB series exploring light at Hestercombe.

The Blue of Distance

Gertrude Jekyll never visited Hestercombe. Due to her failing eyesight, she often worked from a distance, using her understanding of plants and colour to imagine the space; the way the hills beyond the garden would change with the light from greys to blues to purple, and how she might echo this in her planting design.

“The Blue of Distance” is the title of Rebecca Solnit’s essay about the feeling of longing we get when we look at the way light refracts on distant hills, and how we idealise a version of that faraway place that is always and forever just out of reach. It was this essay that sprang to mind the first time I visited Jekylls’ Grand Plat, which is such a landmark in the history of English garden design.

But this idea of Englishness is complicated by the fact that many of the plants Jekyll chose come from much further afield. The imaginary that Solnit describes so evocatively was also integral to Empire, where the faraway and the exotic were commodities, and plant-hunters capitalized on the demand for new species. These would be appreciated by ladies wandering in the gardens with their parasols, protecting themselves from the UV light that makes your skin turn brown. My use of cyanotype, then, refers to blue as evocative of distance as well as to the cultural responses to UV light itself.

I have chosen to work with blue-flowered plants from Jekyll’s plans. The maps are from the 1900s, when the garden was designed, and show the parts of the world from which the plants originate. The images show the kind of terrain that is the plant’s habitat, and are contemporary photographs, often taken from tourism websites. The plant images are photographs taken in Hestercombe gardens this year.

Lizzie Philps

Lizzie Philps is an artist and writer with a background in site-specific performance. Her practice often has an environmental theme; whether with international mother-artists in response to the tidal issues of Jersey for the Live Art Development Agency (2017), or in the creation of The Lesser Spotted Collectors Club, an immersive dystopian adventure about the extinction of birdlife which took over We The Curious, Bristol (2010). Lizzie’s work has been exhibited at Somerset House, Spike Island and MAC Birmingham, and her writings exploring the relationships between women and landscape have been published by Routledge and Demeter Press as well as several journals. Lizzie will be creating a series of exhibitions, walks and writings at Hestercombe in 2025-26 as part of a DYCP grant from the Arts Council.

www.lizziephilps.com