Waterflame

B and I visited Houghton Hall today, an extremely impressive historic house that was built for Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first Prime Minister.  It is described as a key building in the history of  Palladian Architecture in England. It is a Grade I listed building surrounded by 1,000 acres of parkland adjacent to Sandringham House.   The parkland supports a herd of white fallow deer (we weren’t close enough for a photo of these…maybe next time).
 
We came across this fountain in the walled garden, which at first site appeared to be fairly dull, until we saw the fire appear along with the water shooting upwards.  This certainly got our cameras clicking away and attracted other visitors who followed suit.  The fountain is called ‘Waterflame’ (and is described as ‘an outlandish folly in a scale appropriate for five-acre walled garden’). It was commissioned by the Marquess of Cholmondeley and was installed in 2008.
 
The artist, Jeppe Hein (born 1974, Copenhagen, Denmark)) is an artist based in Berlin and Copenhagen. His interactive sculptures and installations  combine elements of humour with the 1970s traditions of  minimalism and conceptual art.
Hein created a site-specific outdoor sculpture for this space. In all seasons, this jet of water surmounted by a ball of flame illustrates a 21st-century folly on a smaller scale than other contemporary land art and pieces in the parkland outside the garden enclosure. The work is intended "to surprise viewers and make them question what they are seeing. Hein wants to “elicit.an incongruous dialogue between the art and the viewer and to use humour to broaden the limits of conceptual art. I want to show that the work isn’t anything on its own, it is only what the public informs it with. The viewers’ role brings the piece to the centre of attention."
Well…it certainly got our attention!


Extras are the stairs in Houghton Hall, and an art installation by Richard Long.