Potemkin

Erected on another green plane, over looking Flood, Potemkin (2021) stands above one of the retaining gabions that support and defend the levels of the landscaped terraces of City Campus. Gabions are used against erosion, often from rising waters on rivers and coasts around the world.

Constructed at an angle to appear precarious, Potemkin is a model of the front of a building that references the US military National Training Center at Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert, California damaged in a huge 2013 monsoon flood. The flood destabilised all the training installations, leaving behind leaning structures.

The term ‘Potemkin’ derives from the fake portable villages built by Grigori Potemkin to deceive Empress Catherine II during her journey to Crimea in 1787 into thinking that Russia was prosperous and well managed. It is now used to refer to a literal or figurative construction that gives the illusion of prosperity and stability.

Image: Stefan Handy for Meadow Arts

 

About the artist

Daniel Pryde-Jarman

Daniel Pryde-Jarman is an artist and curator whose research interests include institutional critique, the politics of display, and forms of self-organised artist-led culture.

Pryde-Jarman has been involved in setting up several artist-run spaces, including Grey Area in Brighton (2006 – 2012), and is currently Director of Meter Room project space & studios, an arts charity based in Coventry that provides affordable studio space to recent art graduates. Pryde-Jarman trained at the University of Brighton and Chelsea College of Arts, and completed his PhD in Curatorial Practice at Coventry University.