Nathan Coley
Until September 30; Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute

Mount Stuart is a wondrous place. The product of one man’s hyperactive imagination, the neo-gothic pile is an unabashed celebration of this world and of a host of mystical otherworlds. Nestling in woodlands on the eastern shore of Bute, every detail of the house expresses innocent delight in things seen and unseen.

The man who built it, in the late 19th century, was the 3rd Marquess of Bute. John Patrick Crichton-Stuart was said to be the richest man in Britain; during the course of his short life, he sponsored at least 60 building projects, earning himself the moniker “Lord of Bricks and Mortar”.

Lord Bute spared no expense on his family’s new home at Mount Stuart, which occupied him for 20 years until his death in 1900. While it was the first house in Scotland to have electrical lighting and a heated swimming pool, it was also a medievalist’s paradise.

The Crichton-Stuart family traces its ancestry directly back to Robert the Bruce, and beyond to Macbeth’s unfortunate Banquo. Lord Bute was keenly aware of his family’s heritage, and deeply interested in the beliefs and sciences of the medieval age.

Signs of the zodiac are prominent around the house, the ceiling of the Marquess’s sitting room displaying the stars in their exact position at the moment of his birth. Mythological characters populate the walls and windows, and other schemes symbolise earth, fire, wind and water.

Lord Bute was heavily involved in psychical studies, crystal balls and seances, but he was also – controversially – a prominent convert to Roman Catholicism. At the same time he earned praise from Jewish figures for his open-minded patronage, supplying land for synagogues and supporting Jewish students.

This is the background against which Nathan Coley was invited to make new work. Every summer the Mount Stuart family – continuing the centuries-old tradition – commissions a contemporary artist to make work in the house and gardens. Last year Anya Gallaccio covered a mighty pine tree with silver leaf, and the year before, Langlands and Bell floored the breath-taking Burges Chapel with mirrors.

The silver tree still shines, only some of the bark having flaked off. Gallaccio’s project worked by enhancing Mount Stuart’s natural assets. In the same vein, Langlands and Bell’s mirrored floor served to reflect the glory of Mount Stuart rather than to compete with it.

Nathan Coley has chosen a more difficult road. In the most prominent of his three works at Mount Stuart, he plants his feet firmly in the ground, and attempts to take on the giant. Sitting between the sweeping lawn and the landscaped woodland sits a dirty old builder’s scaffold.

The metal tower, so totally out of place with the picturesque fantasy of Mount Stuart, bears the lightbulbed legend: “THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE”. The words might be intended as a caption to the lawn beyond, but their immediate impact is one of confrontation. They seem to address the sandstone monument opposite, dedicated in 1772 to the 3rd Earl’s alleged lover, Princess Augusta, with the Latin words “You will remain in my memory so long as I am conscious and my spirit controls my limbs”.

The urban framework of scratched and stained metal, with its circus lights, tries hard to close down the ingrained romanticism of this place, but it’s powerless to defeat the tragic sentiment of Augusta’s monument, and the natural beauty everywhere around it. It’s powerless to outshine the magical mysticism of the 3rd Marquess’s domain, and his unshakeable religious faith.

This might be a re-enactment of the Enlightenment (complete with its own illumination) standing firm against the twin giants of romance and religion. It might be a Calvinist tut-tut at all those who swallow the conceit of the contrived picturesque landscape, or fall for the new age whims of the 3rd Marquess.

Or it might be a project designed to fail. “There will be no miracles here” is a line used by Coley before, quoting from a sign once erected by the king in the French village of Modseine, known for its frequent miracles and magic. The king, in this instance, was asserting authority way beyond his reach. Erected in a public space in Stirling in 1998, Coley’s screenprinted version would have caused confusion. Here in the glories of Mount Stuart, it looks so absolutely ridiculous that no-one could take it seriously. Perhaps that’s the point.

At the visitor centre, Coley has placed three hardboard models: a church, a mosque and a synagogue. Each is painted in lurid “dazzle” camouflage which attracts attention rather than deflecting it. When Coley made 286 models of places of worship in Edinburgh two years ago, it was to be understood in the context of John Ruskin’s writings, as a labour of love. This time it’s difficult to know how to interpret these stubborn replicas, except to acknowledge Lord Bute’s interest in buildings in all three faiths.

Inside the house, in the marble chapel whose white walls are dappled with the roaming red light of the stained glass windows, Coley reopens dialogue with the illuminated sign outside. A heart-shaped silver casket sits on a plinth, its two sides locked with silver padlocks. It was in this casket that the 3rd Marquess’s heart was carried by his widow to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, and buried within sight of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The dying wishes of Lord Bute echoed those of his ancestor, Robert the Bruce, whose heart was carried into the Crusades after his death in 1329.

It’s no surprise that the casket intrigues Coley, whose recent work took him to the holiest places of Jerusalem to study their effect on pilgrims. He persuaded the Crichton Stuart family to put the casket on display for the first time, and despite its size and simplicity, it embodies the very core of Mount Stuart; its faith, its romance, its yearning for the Holy Land. It is so diametrically opposed to the absurd scaffolded sign outside, that the casket’s inscription might as well read, “There will be miracles here”.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 21.05.06