By Gilbert McCarragher
AUTHOR ESSAY
While its garden is well-trodden, Prospect Cottage’s interiors remained largely private after Derek Jarman, the artist and gay activist, died aged 52 in 1994 from an Aids-related illness. The photographs and essays in my book explain my experience of spending time at the Dungeness house at a transitional point in its history, revealing the care given to it by Jarman’s companion, Keith Collins, across the 24 years following Derek’s death before Collins sadly passed away.
I let myself in to Prospect and looked around. Collins’s freshly washed shirt and towels, now two weeks dry, waited patiently to be neatly folded and put away. A different fate awaited them now that he was not coming back. I wondered whether they would become part of the record of the cottage’s past, like Jarman’s blue worker’s overalls, carefully folded and neatly stacked on his work bench in the studio.
The studio bears the bulk of the scars from Jarman’s time in the house. Located past the front room, towards the end of the main hallway, its tongue-and-groove panelled walls and ceiling match the palette of the Spring room and bedroom. But the various colourful paint splatters, blemishes and marks change the feel of the room, giving its rich, sombre tones a greater vibrancy.
A set of cabinets, fronted with glass doors in thin wooden frames, runs the full length of the wall on the right as you enter. Like the cabinets in the corridor to the garden room, these are kept locked, their small brass keys stored in the same tin in the kitchen.
The cabinets contain various books, among them numerous titles on or by Jarman. They also contain props from his films, his BFI membership card and various awards that he received.
Among the more curious things in the cabinets is a large bronze dildo from Genesis P-Orridge’s band Psychic TV. It is one of several, I gather, that
