Roots In The Garden

Roots In The Garden is a continuation of ongoing themes in my artistic practice that focus on the evolution of nature as a product of culture. I approach this discussion by referencing historic and contemporary issues within the discourses of landscape, natural philosophy, urban development, and art theory, while visually juxtaposing the mathematical precision and control of constructed space with the organic chaos of foliage and greenery.

Roots In The Garden combines embossing techniques and digital photographic prints, resulting in images that are rich, detailed, visually and mentally stimulating. The photographic images were captured at the Leslie Street Allotment Gardens in Toronto, have been meticulously retouched, and are printed on Hahnemuhle Copperplate Etching paper. The human figures that appear in each print were sourced from google images and used to create outlines for embossing templates that were laser cut from 1/8th inch acrylic. After printing, each image is then soaked in water to soften the paper fibres so the form of the human figure can be physically embossed into the paper surface and the printed image. The subtly placed, almost ghost like human form in each image becomes the anomaly in the otherwise ‘pristine’, ’natural’ garden space, breaking the traditional purity and smoothness of the printed photographic surface.

The idea for this body of work emerged from feedback, discussions, and observations I encountered during production and exhibition of another ongoing body of work, The Nature of Urbanity, which shares many thematic traits. For many, the idea of ‘nature’ as a construction is at first somewhat difficult to comprehend, because it draws complex connections between and calls into question many aspects of our everyday life and fundamental intellectual discourses. The crux of my argument is that human and nature do not exist in binary as the vernacular of the term would have us believe, but instead are actually of the same physical and conceptual origin. What struck me most about the reception of this earlier body of work was how viewers gravitated heavily toward the images where a human figure was present, because it acted as the anomaly in the otherwise ‘pristine’ garden landscape. What was often overlooked however, was the relationship this anomalous presence had to the images where the human figure was absent. Viewers delighted in the garden spaces devoid of the human form as if they were ideal untouched piece of ‘nature’.
The vegetable garden is an entirely constructed landscape and when its maker is missing, it masquerades as nature behind the veil of foliage, greenery, and the cycle of growth and decay contained within its walls. It is that tenuous relationship between the human as a natural anomaly, and the organic as nature that I am addressing through this work. The relieved human figure does not present itself right away to the viewer, mirroring the underlying reality of our relationship to nature which many overlook at first and assume is a-priori. Conversely the beauty of the garden stands out and delights the traditional romantic tendencies toward nature we hold so dear. However, once one has realized the presence of the human in the image and landscape it can not be missed or overlooked, much like the process of coming to understand the relationship that exists between man and nature. This combination creates a subtle interplay between the form of the garden, its maker, and the veil of ‘nature’ surrounding it.