Modern Nature: The Journals of Derek Jarman

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As the seasons turned and his flowers rose and the AIDS plague felled his friends one by one, Jarman mourned loss after loss, then grounded himself again and again in the irrepressible life of soil and sprout and bud and bloom. The garden, which his Victorian ancestors saw as a source of moral lessons, became his sanctuary of “extraordinary peacefulness” amid the deepest existential perturbations of death, his canvas for creation amid all the destruction. The diary ends in hospital, the opening litanies of plant names replaced by those of the drugs that were keeping him alive. AZT, Ritafer, sulphadiazine, carbamazepine, the grim lullaby of the early 1990s. But Jarman would rise from his hospital bed and go on to make Edward II, Wittgenstein and Blue, his magisterial late films. He crammed much more than seems possible into the next four years, before dying at the age of 52.

I work like a gardener,” the visionary artist Joan Miró observed in reflecting on his creative process. Jarman's films are saturated with religious tropes - gardens being a prime example - and as his health began to fail, he became increasingly monastic. Hearing he was to be released from St Mary's hospital after succumbing to tuberculosis of the stomach, he makes feverish plans, starting with his London home: "Clear Phoenix House entirely, no more clutter, get rid of everything, start painting, get my Edward II under way. Plant the garden." As he approached the end all he wanted was to do was create. Jim Ellis, Derek Jarman's Angelic Conversations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), pp. 200–1. Facing an uncertain future, Jarman found solace in nature, growing all manner of plants. Some perished beneath wind and sea-spray while others flourished, creating brilliant, unexpected beauty in the wilderness. The gardener digs in another time, without past or future, beginning or end. A time that does not cleave the day with rush hours, lunch breaks, the last bus home. As you walk in the garden you pass into this time — the moment of entering can never be remembered. Around you the landscape lies transfigured. Here is the Amen beyond the prayer.He followed this with Jubilee (shot 1977, released 1978), in which Queen Elizabeth I of England is seen to be transported forward in time to a desolate and brutal wasteland ruled by her twentieth-century namesake. [16] Jubilee has been described as "Britain's only decent punk film", [17] and featured punk groups and figures such as Jayne County of Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, Jordan, Toyah Willcox, Adam and the Ants and The Slits. Niall Richardson, 'The Queer Cinema of Derek Jarman: Critical and Cultural Readings' (I.B. Tauris, 2009)

John Hansard Gallery is pleased to present Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature, curated with author Philip Hoare. But as he explained to the painter Maggi Hambling, his interests did not entirely square with those of a stately Victorian naturalist. “Ah, I understand completely,” she replied. “You’ve discovered modern nature.” The definition was ideal, encompassing both reeling nights cruising on Hampstead Heath and the waking nightmare of HIV infection. His capacity to write honestly about sex and death makes much contemporary nature writing seem prissy and anaemic. There’s no one like him now. The other day I read a tweet from a journalist defending people who write for certain publications by saying: “Journalism is a dying industry and writers need to pay their rent. We’re certainly not rich enough to choose our morals over the need to survive.”Derek (2008): a biography of Jarman's life and work, directed by Isaac Julien and written and narrated by Tilda Swinton. Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson* - Live At L' Etrange Festival 2004 - The Art Of Mirrors (Homage To Derek Jarman)". Discogs . Retrieved 5 May 2021. Illuminating Jarman’s working practice and echoing the vivid narrative of his journals will be as yet unseen photographs of Dungeness and Jarman by his friend Howard Sooley, alongside an intimate portrait of Jarman by the British artist Maggi Hambling, coiner of the term ‘Modern Nature’.