Have you ever been somewhere so beautiful you feel as though you might be in the Garden of Eden? Recently, I had the privilege of visiting such a place in Ireland called Glenkeen Garden, an artist residency hosted by the Crespo Foundation. Founded by Ulrike Crespo (1950-2019), psychologist, photographer, philanthropist, and an heir to the Wella haircare fortune, the foundation is based in Crespo’s native city of Frankfurt.
More than just an attractive place, the Crespo Foundation has a twin focus on the cultural and social sectors, with a strong emphasis on the connection between art and nature. The foundation’s programmes and projects support artists, advocate for cultural education, provide access to education and empower individuals.
Glenkeen Garden
Glenkeen Garden is a site of around ten hectares on the coast of West Cork. Extending down to the shore of the aptly-named Roaringwater Bay, it is embedded in a unique landscape of archetypal Irish willows and pristine nature. Seawater ebbs and flows into the waters of the bay: I swam in the waters and found them to be both fresh and buoyant.
The founder, Ulrike Crespo, found the garden an inspirational place to work: it is her creation. The garden, which is 50% wild and 50% cultivated, creates various zones, including meadows designed by Piet Oudolf (who landscaped New York’s High Line), which have been enhanced with sculpture by well-known artists, including David Nash, Peter Kogler, Laura Ford and Ulrich Rückreim.
Residency at the Living Museum
Glenkeen Garden is private, however it is accessible to the public on specified open days outside of artists’ residency periods. Artists who take part in the residencies have the opportunity to immerse themselves in this rich environment and the unique and welcoming social and cultural tapestry of West Cork. The residency is unique in inviting artist collectives, pairs and creative collaborators who wish to work together and draw inspiration from this dramatic landscape. The aim is to foster a sense of creative community and cross-pollination among artists from a variety of disciplines.
While living and working in Glenkeen Garden for three months, the artists take part in an interdisciplinary exchange about human beings, art and nature, aided by access to a local network of scholars from the humanities and natural sciences.
During my visit, I considered that the artists I met were successfully working together to create a “living museum,” by documenting and preserving the social and natural history of West Cork.
A New Addition: Crespo House
Meanwhile, across the seas, the new Crespo House in the heart of Frankfurt, which opened to great acclaim on 10 October 2024, is a 1950s modernist building that has been renovated with a huge new green roof and linked to the neighbouring medieval monastery, creating connections across time and nature.
The flexible and innovative interior has been designed by the award-winning exhibition designer Michael Mueller (who has worked closely with William Forsyth, Max Hollein and other sound, dance and visual artists.) It provides a multi-disciplinary grid and space for any kind of media, in order to accommodate the many different creative disciplines of Glenkeen artists and the other creative and community encounters it hosts.
A Rich Culture of Community
Participating artists are embedded in a region of West Cork with a rich cultural scene, a place that has drawn many counter-cultural artists and creatives since the 1960s. The local town of Balladyhop, with 340 inhabitants and five cultural festivals, is home to many artists and craftspeople. The Glenkeen Residency works closely with the local creative community and the West Cork Art Centre in Skibbereen, in addition to the Environmental Research Institute at University College Cork and the Glucksman Art Gallery. This communal effort is what creates a living museum. Glenkeen’s living museum is made up of catalogues or archives of the natural habitat of West Cork. For example, a couple I met were preserving local lichen by making cyanotypes of the different types.
The Art of Cyanotypes
Cyanotypes, the fascinating Victorian forerunners of photographs, are made by laying objects on paper coated in a solution of iron salts before exposing the paper to UV light and washing the paper. The areas exposed to light become blue shadows and middle tones. The unexposed areas are washed away to create highlights.
Multi-media artist Annabel Dover (also known by her illustrator name Annabel Pearl), uses a variety of techniques, including cyanotype. Dover obtained a PHD at Chelsea College of Art, studying the cyanotype albums of Anna Atkins. She then went on to write Florelegia, a novel about Anna Atkins, the Victorian amateur botanist, who is credited as being the first woman to take a photograph. Dover’s research, however, led her to believe that Atkins had doctored and manipulated her images, collaging different sections of different plants together. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that Anna Atkins would have warmly welcomed the opportunity to take part in the living museum at Roaringwater Bay.
The Glenkeen Variations: ArtNature/NatureArt
The exhibition, Glenkeen Variations: ArtNature/NatureArt marks the debut presentation in Frankfurt of works created by alumni of the artists-in-residence program at Glenkeen Garden. From sonic explorations to material investigations, scientific research and poetic imaginaries, the eleven artists and artists’ groups present a wide array of creative encounters.
The exhibition is curated by Ben Livne Weitzman, Program Coordinator Glenkeen Garden Residencies, and Christiane Riedel, Chairwoman of the Crespo Foundation. Inspired by explorations in and around the garden, across bog lands and seaweed forests, up along drystone walls and down to the local pub, the works exhibited carry within them the traces of these paths and the conversations held along the way. The support network cultivated around Glenkeen Garden, including Frankfurt’s Senckenberg Research Institute, the University College Cork with its Glucksman Art Gallery, many regional art institutions in Ireland and the local community of Ballydehob, nurtures meaningful relations in and around the landscape.
The works presented in Glenkeen Variations were developed during and after the residency. They challenge preconceptions and explore the tensions between what is seen and what is heard, what is told and what is sensed. In the galleries of the newly opened Crespo House, the geographical distance between Frankfurt and West Cork seems to shrink, inviting viewers to momentarily immerse themselves in the enchanting realm of Glenkeen Garden, which suddenly feels remarkably nearby. The magic of a living museum is that you can take objects off-site, away from the place of their creation, and that is what makes Crespo House so very special and quite unique.
[Written December 2024]
