Neville Gabie’s Ice shed and more at @nationaltrust Tatton Park

There are some great sheds at Tatton Park

From May to September 2010, Tatton Park stages its second Biennial of contemporary art, a laboratory for creative experiment and exchange, with new works commissioned for the Deer Park, Mansion and Formal Gardens.

Twenty-one artists are contributing to the life of the Biennial, with commissions considering ideas about what links people to place, notions of history and place-making and collective visions for the future.

Our artists were commissioned to develop works that could exist out of doors for five months in the North West – sheds seemed ideal to some of them. Tatton is a very grand estate, and the shed as a working/hobbying site undercuts some of the pretension of the formal grounds. One shed is a site of horror, another of flying fantasy, the third a place of topsy-turvy contemplation and Neville’s is a place of dislocated awe…

Jem Finer Spiegelei photo: Thierry Bal

Jamie Shovlin Rough Cut/Cut Rough (Hiker Meat) photo: Thierry Bal

Fiona Curran This time next year things are going to be different photo: Thierry Bal

But this one is my favourite for some reason as its not a traditional shed like the others.

Neville Gabie A Weight of Ice Carried from the North for You photo: Neville Gabie

Neville Gabie’s quasi-heroic hunting, harvesting, transporting and maintenance of his two tons of Greenlandish ice echoes both the nineteenth century interest in re-location (Tatton, like most grand houses of its time imported ice from the North Pole) and our newfound societal interest in sustainability. Gabie’s work is problematic: should we be ‘harvesting’ ice from the Pole? We are told, if we don’t, it will simply melt as global temperatures incrementally rise. And why should the peoples of this region not find for themselves another natural resource that can be exchanged for apples, which they receive via ships from Spain? Gabie is working with the Sustainable Energy Research Group at Southampton University to ensure a new form of refrigeration can take place for the ice – solar powered cells and cool water add to the puzzle in these climatically-confused times. Such a lot of effort for art?