“I’m a very inquisitive person, and I’m particularly drawn to information that needs to be rehabilitated or celebrated,” says Monster Chetwynd, who this summer unveils two kindly anarchic commissions in very different locations, at Gloucester Road tube station in London and Mount Stuart on the Scottish Isle of Bute. Originally Alaila, then Spartacus, then Marvin Gaye and now Monster Chetwynd, the entertainer known for his idiosyncratic extravaganzas involving homemade costumes, handmade props and fleets of participants.
These epic carnival events draw on and blend an eclectic yet often erudite range of sources that can range from Hieronymous Bosch and Rabelais to Meatloaf, medieval mystery plays and Conan the Barbarian.
Although she was the first performance artist to be nominated for the Turner Prize, in 2012 Chetwynd’s practice is spreading across all media. Films, paintings, sculptures and installations frequently intertwine, and in London and Bute alike, these multiple activities are brought into play to demonstrate both Monster’s voracious appetite for research as well as what she describes as “the radical fun.
Monster Chetwynd in Gloucester Road, London
Photo: Benedict Johnson
The life of the pond: Albertopolis and the lily, takes an original route through colonialism, botany and engineering to explore the intertwined histories of Gloucester Road station and the extensive program of mid-19th century cultural and educational redevelopment launched by Prince Albert in the wake of the great exhibition of 1851. The exhibition was housed in Joseph Crystal Palace in Paxton, a wonder of the world which was visited by six million people. Proceeds from ticket sales helped build the museums, monuments and educational institutions in what would come to be dubbed Albertopolis, just south of Hyde Park, which included the Natural History, Victoria and Albert Museums and science as well as two stations: South Kensington and Gloucester. Road.
Chetwynd’s research also revealed that the gardener-engineer Paxton had once pioneered the construction of large greenhouses to house tropical plants gathered from around the world by Victorian explorers, including the giant Amazonian water lily Victoria Regia, whose circular leaves massive can reach 3 m deep. diameter. “They have this incredible weight distribution running through their veins – Paxman put his daughter on one,” says Chetwynd.
These giant water lilies have also inspired Chetwynd to translate the story of Paxton and the lily into five 4m diameter plaster roundels which next year will punctuate the length of Gloucester Road’s District Line platform. From a distance, the works look stately and classical, like Renaissance tondos, but their surfaces are bubbling with reliefs of frogs, insects and turtles, or, as Chetwynd puts it, “amphibious, underwater creatures admiring the inspiring structure of the lily”. At the head of these imposing works is a plaster sculpture of a giant salamander, holding a lily leaf aloft like a parasol.
Chetwynd also made an accompanying film which plays in the ticketing room and delves into how the Victoria Regia lily (which was highly esteemed by the indigenous Tupi-Guarani people before receiving its royal nickname) Crystal Palace and the train station of Gloucester Road are all inextricably linked. with stories of colonialism. ‘Who Named the Lily’ features Chetwynd as the ‘Fact Hungry Witch’ persona who, wearing a shimmering pink bodysuit and fluffy blonde wig, travels via a tube and broom to investigate colonialism, history of the Amazon lily and the nature of truth. She sees the film as “the biography of the lily rather than Paxton or dead white men, adding that ‘you don’t have to assume authority comes from a certain place – you can ask equally valid questions if you’re wearing pantyhose.”
Monster Chetwynd’s Moths at Mount Stuart House and Gardens, Isle of Bute
© Keith Hunter Photography
Chetwynd describes herself as “definitely secretive politics rather than politically open” and at Mount Stuart she turns her research and radical enjoyment to questions of environmentalism filtered through the banal and oft maligned moth. Arriving at Mount Stuart’s vast Victorian pier, built by the third Marquess of Bute, she was at first intimidated by this ‘rich fruitcake of history’. But when she noticed a count of moths was underway by local researchers, she had found her subject in what she saw as a ‘neglected nocturnal creature that people don’t bother to ask about’. . “Moths are phenomenal, they’re so unknown and yet there are thousands of species of them, so I decided I’d like to work with them,” she says.
To this end, she has installed huge cardboard, fabric and latex sculptures of “glamorous and beautiful moths” in the bedrooms of Mount Stuart, as well as a series of exquisite small oil paintings by Bat Opera. Other moth replicas and alien-like pupa costumes hang in the crypt and nearby film shows them in action, worn by local school children, Mount Stuart staff and artists during a playful parade through the house and grounds.
The making of the film inspired a live performance on the opening weekend, which involved more community antics as well as presentations from the local moth experts who had inspired the play in the first place. As this most inclusive artist declares: “I am very determined to make things happen. But although I work towards joy and frivolity, at the same time I don’t just pay lip service to radical pleasure. I hope I can dig a ditch and make people think, while boosting morale.
• Monster Chetwynd: Pond Life Albertopolis and the Lily, Gloucester Road tube station, until May 2024
• Chetwynd Monster: Moths, Mount Stuart House and Gardens, Isle of Bute, until August 20
