ANNA FEWSTER : : letterpress printer and book artist

In the Orchard

IN THE ORCHARD

☛ A site-specific installation in three sections for the Small Wonder Short Story Festival at Charleston, 2009.

☛ Based on a short story by Virginia Woolf, the installation offered an accessible reading of one of Woolf’s most experimental pieces by arranging the text in sections around the garden at Charleston. Each illustrated piece could be located by following a letterpress printed map. Emphasizing the reader’s active part in making a story, participants were also encouraged to form their own creative responses.

☛ Virginia Woolf’s experimental short story ‘In The Orchard’ was ﬁrst published in The Criterion (edited by T. S. Eliot) in April 1923. Composed in three sections, the story overlooks conventional ideas of narrative sequence and perspective to construct a ﬂuent rhapsody on the nature of perception.

Each section begins with the same phrase: “Miranda slept in the orchard”. The impressionistic scenes that follow describe the same succession of events from variant outlooks, calling attention to the ﬂuctuating character of interior thought and experience.

Established conceptions of literary representation are fractured, and the reader gathers a prismatic vision of three viewpoints. In this, the inﬂuence of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant is evident. Abandoning surface realism for new shapes and new forms, the Bloomsbury artists’ experiments encouraged Virginia Woolf to question “the meaning of structure & texture in painting & in writing”.

The ‘In the Orchard’ installation at Charleston for Small Wonder consciously underscores Virginia Woolf’s innovative play with linearity. Suggesting that the three sections can be read in any sequence, the installation seeks to challenge the impulse towards order in reading. It also seeks to emphasize the reader’s active part in making a story, and encourages you to create your own impression – verbal or visual – in response to Virginia Woolf’s words.