Siobhan O'Reagain
28 October - 16 November 2014
Main & Mezzanine Galleries
This exhibition consists of an installation of porcelain works and drawings that reflect a personal interpretation of the garden, using both fine art and botanical approaches.
The porcelain works and drawings explore plant forms and garden implements. While the garden is traditionally seen as a “piece of ground” (Allen,1990:485) adjoining a house, this exhibition explores the garden as representing growth, adornment, and refuge; a reflection of metamorphosis and life cycles, migration, and the changing of seasons. This transience and fragility is echoed in the use of porcelain, itself delicate and translucent.
The exhibition postulates the garden as a metaphor of our lives; representative of our present, yet intrinsically linked with our past in terms of self, culture, spirituality, circumstance, emotion, social standing, labour and the heritage of colonialism. This heritage is explored using indigenous and exotic plants from my garden and the Botanic Gardens.
This interpretation of the garden encourages the viewer to personalise, re-think and re-conceptualise past gardens of memory, and those of the present in a way which both make the garden meaningful, tangible and uniquely relevant to their lives.
In addition, it demonstrates the importance of the garden, whether public or private, as a reflection of our lives.
- Siobhan O'Reagain
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