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Jane Wildgoose is making Life is Very Sweet at The Harley Museum & Gallery

18 July – 21 March 2011

Jane Wildgoose takes inspiration from accounts of 18th century dessert servings featuring elaborate sugarwork, whilst Bompas & Parr run a one day extravaganza at the Harley Gallery and Museum.

Set in the grounds of the Welbeck Estate, the Harley Gallery holds touring exhibitions of contemporary art, craft, photography and design, and has a shop selling high calibre British craft. The adjoining Museum shows magnificent examples of fine and decorative arts from the Portland Collection, built up over four centuries by a single family. The recently opened exhibition, Dinner with a Duke, explores 400 years of dining at Welbeck.

The Harley have commissioned two projects that will link with the School of Artisan Food which is sited on the Estate. This will use the history of the Estate, entertainment and food as their starting point.

Jane Wildgoose's project opens in July 2010 as an accompaniment to the exhibition Dinner with a Duke: Decoding food and drink at Welbeck 1690-1910 (April 2010 - February 2012). Over June 2010 Jane worked closely with local sugarcraft expert Christina Ludlam and volunteers in a series of workshops in which they have been producing fragile white flowers made from sugar. Jane and Christina have also spent a day with food historian Ivan Day, who demonstrated techniques used in 18th-century sugarwork.

The sugar flowers produced at the workshops with Christina will become the centrepiece of Jane's installation, alongside 18th-century porcelain and paintings from the collection. The sugar flowers will also feature in displays in the Harley Gallery shop windows, where they will be supplemented by shell flower-work and framed by bowers planted with growing flowers, developed in collaboration with Darfoulds Nurseries, Worksop.

Jane has also photographed a magnificent set of 18th century Gobelin tapestries at Welback Abbey, and she will be using elements of her photographs of some of the decorative details in the tapestries as the basis for a digitally printed backdrop to her installation.

With a change of pace, Bompas & Parr are facilitating a special one-day event for 500 people on 4 December. Visitors will be taken on a ‘mystery tour’ from the Harley Museum & Gallery, around the Welbeck Estate, for an extravaganza in Welbeck Abbey, never normally open to the public. Participants will walk through the sunken ‘rose corridor’, into the vast underground ballroom (with special lighting effects for the event), for a screening of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, feasting on food featured in the film. Expect choirs, and organ music from the Chapel!

Take part: Local people are involved in making sugar flowers and local young people will work with Bompas & Parr to create some of the special effects on the magical mystery tour. To find out information on securing tickets for the event on 4 December, please contact Bompas & Parr on www.jellymongers.co.uk.

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