PHOTO 2020 – Garden Variety: Photography, Politics and the Picturesque

Photo 2020 media release from Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria:

-

Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria is delighted to be part of the inaugural PHOTO 2020 International Festival of Photography with a site-responsive exhibition in Melbourne Gardens. Curated by Isobel Parker Philip, this suite of ambitious new commissions plots a pathway through the Gardens and leads visitors on a journey of discovery.

The landscape itself is enlisted as an exhibition partner, with each installation sensitively mapped and in dialogue with its surrounds. Artists James Nguyen, Luke Parker, Steven Rhall, Yvonne Todd, Grace Wood and Emmaline Zanelli engage with the Gardens’ history and draw reference from its rich archival holdings.

Garden Variety challenges the idea that a garden exists and functions as an idyllic and politically neutral space. Sensitive to the symbolism attached to the site, the exhibition addresses Melbourne Gardens’ many functions and identities. It is a natural landscape and a scientific institution but also a marker of colonisation and an occasional backdrop for subtle displays of soft power. The Gardens are a place for pleasure but also political performance, a civic space that carries (horti)cultural capital.

Presented by Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria as part of PHOTO 2020.

Image: Grace Wood, Habit + Habitat (Euphorbia paralias) (detail) 2020 Courtesy and © the artist. Images from State Botanical Collection, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and the artist’s personal collection.

For more information visit:

https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/whats-on/photo-2020-exhibition/2020-04-23