Writer Rosie Lowit takes a trip to Norfolk for Houghton, the staple British festival known for leading the way in visual art and electronic music.
An increasing number of music festivals are incorporating visual arts into their programming, its presence encouraging moments of focus in an otherwise lawless environment. Houghton Festival, Norfolk’s hedonistic playground, is a trendsetter in all aspects. I’d heard it has a cult following that descends upon the estate year on year, and I now understand why.
Houghton is held in the grounds of the immense Houghton Hall, Norfolk, built for Britain’s first Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole in the 1720s. Founded in 2017 by esteemed DJ and painter Craig Richards, it combines otherworldly sound systems with an innovative visual arts programme. The only festival in the UK with a 24-hour music license, this year’s lineup introduces the most debut acts to date and offers sets by regulars like Joy Orbison and Ben UFO.
I’ve mainly come, however, for the arts offering; iconic light artist Chris Levine has been commissioned to create three installations and EBBA studios has designed a site-specific work in the woods. Within such a “busy and energetic setting”, Levine shares in an email interview before the festival, his aim is to “penetrate the noise and operate at a level that gives a sensory hit.” Get me involved.
It’s Thursday morning and my +11 and I are en route, getting pop princess Gracie Abrams out of our systems before a weekend of what I like to call ‘untz untz music’. It takes us two hours to get through security and what feels like another two to set up our campsite, at which point evidently bored security guards come to the rescue. The wind then starts blowing into my tent at 20mph. It’s going to be a great weekend.
The expansive visual arts programme is immediately apparent upon exploring the main arena on Thursday evening. Metal structures are dotted around the food village and continue into the forest, with Richards’ Tree comes down, Andrew goes up – a sculptural tribute to DJ Andrew Weatherall – towering at the back of Pavilion stage. Starting with Wayne Holland’s set, we choose the sculpture as our meeting point for the weekend. The lack of phone signal, whilst enforcing a welcome digital detox, makes losing one another inevitable.
After allowing ourselves an early (ish) first night, Friday begins with trying – and failing – to join an oversubscribed tour of Houghton’s sculpture gardens. Who knew art would be so popular with inebriated festival goers? With no media pass to flash, we accept defeat and spend the morning in The Orchard, Houghton’s wellness space. I stumble across Luke Davis, a ‘poet for hire’ who kindly listens to my vague ramblings and writes me a poem in two minutes.
At Armadillo, we attend a set by the one and only Craig Richards, who Chris Levine then joins for a talk. Best known for Lightness of Being (2008), his photograph of the Queen, Levine speaks brilliantly about the relationship between art, light and sound. “Let’s see how fucking high we can get with tech,” he tells an enthusiastic audience.
After a post-cultural-overload siesta we’re back at it, finding our first Levine work outside gritty industrial venue Warehouse following a Helena Hauff stint. Every installation at Houghton, he’s explained over email, are works in progress that have been in development for years. For LIGHT is LOVE, he’s used a ‘blipvert’, a peripheral imaging technique that projects streams of text or imagery onto the mind when one shakes their head. He intends his art to be “all about frequency and good vibrations”; this is certainly the case here, the surprise visuals of particular delight to passers-by at midnight.
The artist had assured me he could be found “on the night shift playing with lasers” and, true to his word, at 2am I spot him taking photos of HIGHER POWER, his enormous purple laser that arcs over the festival and extends into the surrounding countryside. The +11 encourage me to speak to him, but I wimp out and scurry past. We enter the woods, where I forget about my awkwardness and the missed potential of an excellent hook for my debut Wonderland article by dancing to Raresh at Pavilion for an hour.
Emerging for the 3:30am laser show, we find a bench from which to watch the spectacle. The show features FULL BEAM, a floating VW campervan that lights up at staged intervals every night, sending mesmerising laser waves across the lake. Within minutes, the now recognisable silhouette of the artist approaches, pausing two metres from where we’re sitting. After further peer pressure, I go and introduce myself. “I’m just looking at this thinking about what I could do better next time”, he tells me. We speak about our mutual love of light artist James Turrell – who Levine met on the grounds of Houghton Hall during Turrell’s major exhibition in 2015 – and how much I enjoyed his talk earlier that day. After embarrassing myself for long enough, I go back to my group and Chris Levine returns to watching his ethereal display light up the lake. Job done.
The night is young and after a dance to Grace Sands at Stallions, we decide that 6am is prime time to find Terminus, Houghton’s secret stage. Situated out of the main arena and beyond the campsite, its music never stops but the lineup isn’t announced. Helpful Houghton veterans lead us in the right direction and after 45 minutes in the queue, which is apparently quick, we get in. Alas the tunes are no match for our aching legs, and after thirty minutes we call it a night – or day – and head back to sleep for as long as possible given the bright daylight and echoes of thumping music.
Saturday morning is therefore a slow one, but we valiantly catch the last bit of a talk on subculture, the line up of which includes brilliant artist and writer Rene Matić. That afternoon, I sit up from a grassy nap and am promptly stung by what I’m later told is a horsefly; over the next 36 hours my hand swells like a balloon. The timing isn’t ideal.
Evening calls for life drawing at The Orchard, led by artist Sophia Shuvalova. We surround the model on yoga mats, attempting to create her likeness in pencil. The skills I thought I had at Art GCSE have deserted me, and I now have charcoal all over my increasingly expanding hand with no soap in sight. The show must go on, and it does so with a dance to Calibre at the Outburst stage, followed by Chez Damier and Luke Una at Stallions.
On Sunday morning we’re at The Orchard again, this time for a sound bath. Squeezing ourselves into the packed tent, a dreamy hour of floating in and out of sleep ensues. We continue the calm at Pinters with a beautiful live set by saxophonist Sha.
It’s 5pm and our last chance to see Houghton Hall’s sculpture garden. My now massive hand and I (and a mere five of the +11 who have soldiered through and are still feigning an interest in the festival’s arts programme) haggle our way to the front of the queue and are escorted onto the ‘land train’, which turns out to be a cattle trailer. I feel like a proper bus wanker when an onlooking festival goer sprays us with his water gun as we trundle out of the arena.
The first sculpture we see is Stephen Cox’s Interior Space (1995), in which the tour volunteers urge us not to get our heads stuck. If you’re wondering what kind of people embark on a sculpture tour on the last day of a festival, here you have your answer. The work is one of several on show by the artist, who’s having his most extensive solo exhibition to date, Myth, at Houghton Hall until 28 September.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most awe-inspiring piece we see is James Turrell’s Seldom Seen Skypace, a permanent work that opened in 2004 as the site’s first contemporary art installation. We’re encouraged to lie on the floor for a minute’s silence – which I do enthusiastically – and watch the sky through the open ceiling. Starkly contrasting the techno beats heard faintly in the background, this moment of peace affirms my love for Houghton.
Our last night kicks off with Joy Orbison at the Derren Smart stage, which has to be one of the best sets of the weekend. At Earthling afterwards, I ask a bartender for ice to aid my painful hand and am told I’d have to pay £2 for the cup. Weary and dejected, I take that as my sign to call it a night.
Our story ends at 7:30am on Monday morning, when the +11 and I pack up our tents and join the masses returning to London after the best weekend of our lives. In a league of its own, Houghton Festival perfectly unites exceptional sound systems and immersive woodland stages with wellness, visual arts and live music. And as Chris Levine himself told me, the part he played was “quite special… and a lot of fun.”
Photography – Khroma Collective
Words – Rosie Lowit
