{Paradise in the Sun} Or a garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers, 2022 By affect lab. A Chiswick House & Gardens newly commissioned radio broadcast as part of Grow FM.

Amsterdam-based creative collective, affect lab, created an antidote to pandemic isolation and anxiety. {Paradise in the Sun} Or a garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers, invited visitors to slow down, disconnect from the ‘noise’ of city living and instead reconnect with the natural environment. Part hypnosis, part therapy, the immersive, interactive audio experience is a celebration of the joy of community, belonging and the sensory pleasures of being in nature. Summoning centuries-old notions of joy, play and tranquillity to ask, how can we find pleasure and nourishment from nature again?

Built originally as a pleasure garden between 1682-1684 by Sir Stephen Fox, a close courtier of Charles II and prominent politician, these walled gardens would have acted as a designated outdoor space for strolls alone or with a companion, with small doses of delight dotted around your journey. Three centuries later, the walled garden is the heart of our thriving community programme and a bountiful Kitchen Garden Bursting with fresh produce.

Set within the safe space of our walled gardens, where landscape and community go hand-in-hand, {Paradise in the Sun} or a garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers, played with the notion of pleasure through sensory and explorative exchanges with nature.

The immersive, interactive audio experience was shaped as part of an on-site residency, to provide the opportunity for a work to be truly responsive to the Kitchen Garden environment and local people. affect lab’s practice is centred on social engagement, in which the residency played a crucial role in allowing the artists to form meaningful relationships with our community partners at Heston West Big Local and their participants who informed and directed the work.

affect lab also drew inspiration from the original designation of the landscape in 1680 as a pleasure garden as well as the joyful descriptions of the “delights” of a garden in the book Paradise Sole Paradisus Terrestris by apothecary and botanist John Parkinson, published in 1629.

Project Credits: 

Curator / Producers: Yinka Danmole and Tadeo Lopez-Sendon   

Narrator: Bella Rix

Graphic Designer: Elisa Piazzi 

Soundscape: ‘mood’ by KMRU 

Production & Fabrication: Max Payne 

Sound Engineer and Studio: Marcel de Rooij – Studio De Slapende Hond

Historian and Advisor: Dr. Sally Jeffery

Photography and Videography: Gregor Petrikovič

With special thanks to:

Taz Virdee, Layba Ali Nisar, Malaika Masood, Zobia Masood, Kapil Lund and all the Heston West Big Local team and local community who took part. Stephen Histed, Chris Greer and all the volunteer gardeners of the Kitchen Garden.

Acknowledgements:

The Grow FM programme was generously supported and funded by the Hounslow Summer of Culture, Linbury Trust and Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

We would also like to thank our Patrons, friends of Chiswick House and Members whose donations and contributions made this work possible.