Nicky Coutts

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Under the Weather 2014
a shelter at Inverewe gardens, Scotland

photograph by Ewen Weatherspoon

photograph by Ewen Weatherspoon

photographs by Ewen Weatherspoon

photograph by Ewen Weatherspoon

Under the Weather is an installation by Nicky Coutts, artist in residence at Inverewe Garden and Estate 2013-2014. Resembling at once a weather station and a Victorian curiosity, this piece provides a lens through which to share the extraordinary vision of Osgood Mackenzie the garden’s founder. Here on the shoreline is the boundary between the comparatively natural, barren, windswept, landscape and the sub-tropical oasis of Inverewe. Inside small windows peep outwards, overlaid with the places Osgood visited in Europe and beyond, often with his daughter Mairi Sawyer, searching for plants to bring back and trial here. A sharp edge points into oncoming Atlantic winds, a reminder that the garden couldn’t be here without its shelter belt of trees, protecting tender exotics from the elements. Here you can shelter from the weather and re-imagine Osgood’s vision.

Nicky Coutts 'Under the Weather' is a film of Nicky Coutts, by Catherine Weir.