Garden Studies draws wide linkages between the gardening proclivities of Agnes Etherington, artistic depictions of plants and flowers from the Agnes collections and Kingston’s colonial architecture and prison cultures. By exploring the window and the garden together in a play of forms and perspectives, the curatorial team invites viewers to reflect on thresholds between inside and outside and to visualize a sort of conceptual garden as a nurturing space for growth and relations within difference. Can a “garden” of artworks gesture to a future space for which we collectively long?
Geoffrey James, Exercise yard built for female inmates, but never used, 2013, colour photograph on archival baryta-coated paper. Gift of the Artist, 2013 (56-026.08)
Ho Tam, Blossom, 1996, ink, paper, wood. Gift of Herbert Bunt, 1997 (40-009.03)