The late great Derek Jarman who died in 1994 aged just 52 was so much more than a queer auteur. This remarkable Brit was a gay rights activist stage designer, diarist, artist, author. and gardener.
His enormous legacy is not just his ground-breaking films such as Sebastiane Jubilee The Tempest Caravaggio Edward II and Blue but also his public fight for gay rights, and his personal struggle with AIDS.
As an avid and visionary gardener, Jarmen’s home in Dungeness on the Kent Coast was his pride and joy. The fairly nondescript village was dominated by an enormous Nuclear Power Station, and it’s only other claim to fame was its small light railway which could take you to the next village and back.
In 1986 when he was first diagnosed with HIV Jarmen bought Prospect Cottage one of the few Victorian fisherman’s; cottages and created in front of it a famous garden inspired by the surrounding coastal landscape of Dungeness
The cottage was facing the prospect of a private sale, following the 2018 death of Keith Collins, Jarman’s close companion in his final years, to whom he bequeathed the property. The UK’s Art Fund believes this would result in the loss of its contents — Jarman’s vast archive — and its artistic legacy so they have started a Campaign to save it for the Nation.
Labels: 2020, crowd fund, Derek Jarman, Tilda Swinton
