Unravelling The Vyne

Another short note, this time on a contemporary art exhibition at one of the National Trust place I work with.

I’ve mentioned the Vyne before (in one of my most popular posts). This time, the focus isn’t on Roman rings or Tolkien, but other aspects of the place’s history. Ten artist-makers working in a variety of media have interpreted parts of the Vyne story in especially created works, which are currently on display around the mansion and in its lovely Summer House.

My favorite is this work by Maria Rivens. In the library she has created a piece and literally pulls all sorts of stories out of books similar to the ones in the Vyne’s collection:

Short Cuts and Pop-Ups, by Maria Rivens

Short Cuts and Pop-Ups, by Maria Rivens

A very effective piece is Two Dancers by Charlie Whinney: steam-bent wood (Ash for the male, and Oak for the female) twist and sweep around each other in the Large Drawing room.

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The enigmatic “Mrs Smith”‘s Party Birds doesn’t quite do it for me, though I like it’s anarchic intent. Most of the party birds are raving it up in the Summer House, but some have sneaked into the Saloon with an old wind-up phonograph, which visitors are invited to play heavy shellac records on. The selection is all bird-themed and I chose to play A Nightingale Sang in Barclay Square. I left that record on the turntable, and later when I was elsewhere, I heard it being played again. The sound of it drifting through the open doorways, was somehow more effective than when I was standing by the machine itself. There’s something there I don’t quite understand about music intentionally played and listened to, and that which (as the movies have it) is incidental. I need to ponder on that.

One last lovely piece really needs unpacking. If you go and see the show, do make sure you are there when one of volunteers is demonstrating it. Its a tiny automaton created by John Grayson, which draws an analogy between an incident at the Vyne and last year’s “Plebgate” hoo-har.

Gate Gate by John Grayson, a tiny automaton

Gate Gate by John Grayson, a tiny automaton

I recommend a visit to this show, which is included in the normal price of admission (free to National Trust members). Here’s a link to a video which explains a little more.


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I came to cultural heritage via five years working at Midland Bank when I left school. In my free time, I volunteered as a costumed interpreter at Kentwell Hall and, with re-enactment societies, at various medieval sites around the UK and France. When, one evening, a few of us said “we could make a business out of this” I left my job at the bank to go to college, first to get an Art Foundation and then to Manchester Polytechnic to join an innovative course called Design for Communications Media. I specialised in Educational Media Design, with the intention of applying what I was learning to cultural heritage. During my vacations and upon graduation I worked for the nascent company my friends had started, Past Pleasures, creating immersive living history festivals at Lancaster and Tunbridge Wells, as well as projects including: an exhibition for the centenary of the Commonwealth Institute; a design for a metafictional Sherlock Holmes exhibition in Croydon; and, a game that combined real-time investment advice from 300 year-old characters at the Bank of England Museum with a digital simulation, tracking the players’ investment portfolio from the founding of the bank to its tercentenary. In 1996 I helped found JMD&Co, and for two years I also lectured on Heritage Tourism and Visitor Management and Interpretation modules for a Portsmouth University validated HND/degree course at Farnborough Technical College. Subsequently, I enrolled in the new Distance Learning delivered Masters’ degree in Museum Studies at Leicester University, where I became interested in the social use of space, particularly Bill Hillier’s “space syntax,” and the increasing futility of cultural heritage sites trying to tell doggedly linear stories in three-dimensional spaces. Although my dissertation explored models for mapping interpretation, and particularly learning styles, onto spaces, a satisfactory reconciliation of linear story and three-dimensional space eluded me. After graduation, I decided my time in the “small business” end of cultural heritage was over for a while, and I left JMD&Co to join a cultural institution, the National Trust, as a Regional Community, Learning and Volunteering Manager. I brought the first National Trust iPad into use at Batemans, where, combined with a wax cylinder record player, and the help of renowned folk singer, Jon Boden, we’ve returned Rudyard Kipling’s voice back into his old home. However, one of the innovations which I am most proud of is the National Trust’s virtual tours. Working with a small company, and a range of disabled stakeholders, we created a touch-screen based human computer interface that could also, if required, be controlled with other input devices, and allowed visitors with a variety of disabilities to fully enjoy the virtual tour. The teams’ achievement was recognised with a Jodi Award for Excellence in accessible digital media in 2008.

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