Artist Laura Ellen Bacon is to create a new installation in the gardens of Chatsworth House.

Laura has been chosen to design and build a new, monumental sculptural installation as the centrepiece of the Arcadia area in Chatsworth’s world-famous 105-acre garden as it undergoes its biggest transformation for 200 years.

Designed to appear as if seeping from the ground, Natural Course will flow down a woodland slope in the previously undeveloped, 15-acre area called Arcadia, which is being created by celebrated garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith. Assembled by coordination of hand and eye to give the great mass of stone a sense of slow, gradual movement over the land, Natural Course aims to suggest an innate life force to the hard and seemingly motionless stone.

Natural Course will push the boundaries of dry stone walling technique. Very different from a typical boundary wall, the technical challenge comes from both the sheer volume of material used and particularly its 40 metres of contours and curves. At more than 10m in length and 2m in height with a base width varying from 50cm to 3m, visitors will be able to enter up to 5m into the sculpture, giving a feeling of being swallowed by stone.

Built from more than 100 tonnes of local stone taken from the Bretton Moor Quarry near Foolow, less than five miles away, Natural Course will be made from tens of thousands of individual, hand placed pieces using a traditional dry-stone walling method. Work is underway with a small team of local dry stone wallers and Laura Ellen Bacon aims to complete the build by April 2020.

Usually working in wood, often willow, Laura Ellen Bacon is known for creating large-scale organic forms but this is her first major commission in stone. Natural Course will join more than 20 sculptural works at Chatsworth by post war masters including Antony Gormley, Angela Conner, Elisabeth Frink, Allen Jones, Michael Craig-Martin and Barry Flanagan.

Laura Ellen Bacon: “This sculpture is a development of my study of form and particularly site-specific works. Inspirations for the work have come from the vast network of dry stone walls across Derbyshire as well as the volume and handling of the immense stones in the Rockery at Chatsworth itself, which is one of the earliest and largest rock gardens in the world.”

“The form, with a quiet nod to a consumption wall in its method, appears to slowly flow over the land and confront the visitor with its sense of mass and quiet movement – referencing the absorbing process of working with one’s hands and the epic work involved in creating the dry stone walls found across Derbyshire.”

The Peak District home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, Chatsworth has begun work on the biggest transformation of its garden since Joseph Paxton’s work finished more than 200 years ago. Having completed the £32m Masterplan project to conserve the house a few years ago, the Duke and Duchess have since been planning to have a similar revitalising effect on the garden.

The Duke of Devonshire: “Laura created a temporary sculptural installation in the garden called Woven Space about seven years ago. Sculpture has always been integral to the garden so, as we were developing early plans for the garden’s transformation at that time, we began talking about ideas for something more permanent. We were keen on something that strongly referenced both Chatsworth itself and the Derbyshire landscape from which it was born.”

“We gave Laura freedom to explore the garden and develop her vision for the location, the materials used, and the sculptural form. I’ve visited her studio in Cromford on various occasions in the past and have been very excited to see how her plans and models have evolved into what will become Natural Course. Its use of local stone and the dry stone walling method will root it in its environment and surroundings but at the same time the ‘hand and eye’ construction and shape make it surprising and thought-provoking in keeping with Chatsworth’s best traditions.”

The Arcadia area is part of a huge garden transformation project that also includes a remodelled Rockery, the Maze borders, the Ravine, and Dan Pearson’s redevelopment of the Trout Stream and the Jack Pond. It includes the clearance of previously inaccessible areas, large-scale structure installations, new sculpture commissions, the movement and addition of hundreds of tonnes of rock, hundreds of thousands of new plants and hundreds of new trees, as well as new pathways taking visitors into underexplored areas of the garden.

The 105-acre garden is the product of nearly 500 years of careful cultivation. Although some points of interest have been replaced to make way for new fashions, the garden retains many early features, including the Canal Pond, Cascade and Duke’s Greenhouse. The famous waterworks include the 300-year-old Cascade, the Willow Tree Fountain and the impressive, gravity-fed Emperor Fountain, which reaches heights up to 90m.

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Images credit: Chatsworth House Trust

A new exhibition will present some of the fascinating figures that have shaped Chatsworth’s past and present over the centuries, by placing their portraits alongside key objects that both illuminate their story and influence perceptions about Chatsworth.

Life Stories traces the lives of friends, artists, politicians and others associated with Chatsworth. Running from 21 March to 4 October, the exhibition pairs portraits and objects, inviting visitors to look closer and meet the many faces of Chatsworth.

Artists Lucian Freud and Angela Conner, the playwright Tom Stoppard, the poet Sir John Betjeman, and ceramicist Natasha Daintry are paired in new and unexpected ways. Objects such as the abandoned paints used by Freud on an unfinished work found in the Sabine Bathroom are used to illustrate their relationship to Chatsworth.

Famous names and objects, Devonshire family members, and staff such as cellarman Edmund Marsden invite visitors to look again at works in the Collection. Founder Bess of Hardwick’s portrait is shown with a modern reproduction of her necklace of 1000 pearls, footage recreating the moment film star Adele Astaire met her future family introduces moments of humour and humanity, while new pieces of jewellery by contemporary artist Tarka Kings are inspired by Chatsworth’s collection of portrait miniatures.

Dr Alexandra Hodby, Curator of Exhibitions & Engagement, Chatsworth said: “We wanted to make the famous faces seen all around Chatsworth more human and easier to relate to – to reduce the distance that their name or the grand setting can sometimes create. In the end, they are human beings like the rest of us and by linking them to a very personal object we make it easier to understand them as people and the impact, great or small, they have had on Chatsworth over the years,”

Click here to find out more about the Life Stories Exhibition

Skin Deep by Natasha Daintry © Natasha Daintry © The Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.