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Nowhere Else but Here
25 June to 1 August 2004
Rieko Akatsuka
Clare Bryan Maurizio Cannavacciuolo
Paul Cunningham Katie
Deith Nowhere Else But Here presents 16 artists working with ideas about gardens. Not about the representation of places that actually exist (though in this show they do occur) but an investigation of the potential of gardens. In many works the garden space exists only in the mind as a refuge, a vision, a dream, a utopia, or an escape. Or as in the case of Darwin a place created for the development of new constructs and ideas (he had a series of walks and other 'thinking patches' within his garden). By making gardens, using or admiring them, we create our own idealised order of nature and culture. Working with a wide range of media from animation and film to painting, drawing, sculpture and photography, this exhibition will investigate the garden as a place of the imagination, a garden as a place that does not actually exist, an area of thought to explore ideas and whims and live out fantasies. This space could be a social or political utopia, a secret land dealing with romantic ideals or a reflexion on virtual places. Ian Kiaer's work is part of an on going project looking at the different possibilities that arise from Frederick Kiesler's notion of the endless house. Kiesler's endless models often took the form of cusps, shells and seed pods, often resembling the dried out structures that litter the landscapes of Hieronymous Bosch. Kiaer here uses notions of Lapatie House by the French architects Lacaton and Vassal with these ideas in a floor and wall based piece. Paul Cunningham's photograph records a found place, a stand of tree's is enclosed within a high fenced area appearing as a secret place a private world to remain undisturbed. Corin Sworn uses a peep box to examine the interior of a house, thinking of this space as a metaphor for the mind. Projected inside is only one view, that of a garden. Finlay Taylor's sculptural work Backyard of my Brain presents a wooden block encircled by a barrage of ideas manifesting as flying insects, open books revealing weed infested pictures and cactus spiked areas, chaos and calm side by side. Louisa Fairclough and Kate Raggett's animation shows formal garden plantings dissolving into one another and shifting perspective as one image morphs into another. Maurizio Cannavacciuolo's painting repeats images of himself in a jungle of garden pests from huge moth larvae to weevils and even a stray hand grenade. Discarded television sets painted over, strange stories and oniric sound are part of the new video work presented by Laure Prouvost. Clare Bryan's image of a grass covered stairway leading to the sky is viewed through a stereoscope. Kate Scrivener's complex drawing covers ivy leaves in minute painted text, contrasting reports of activities both wild and controlled within the garden and landscape. The drawing appears as a place where ideas and forms are concentrated and examined.
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