A different canvas

Sometimes being an artist is the best job in the world. Over the decade I have worked professionally I have been involved in many diverse contemporary projects, from installations to film and public art, and have met so many fascinating and resourceful people. I can't imagine what other career would have offered this scope.

Since starting the garden here at Lawson Park, my horticultural confidence and knowledge have really developed in ways I could never have anticipated. Opening the garden this year (Aug. 24th) feels like the preview of any other exhibition of my work!
In the last year or so I have really wanted to start integrating gardening into my art - not as 'sculpture in the garden' which I almost universally hate - but holistically, as a way of articulating my feelings about, well - everything.

I think there is something profound about a garden, something profound and utopian about people making gardens together, especially in public places (I see Lawson Park essentially as a public garden). In that way they connect at a deep level with the ambitions I have always had for my art works.

With that thought, myself and Nina Pope - with whom I have worked for over a decade - recently successfully bid for a commission to be lead artists on Abbey Gardens, a site near the Olympic Village in East London. The site cannot be 'developed' due to holding some ruins of a Cistercian Abbey there, and so it's earmarked as a new public garden with spaces for locals and commuters / visitors. A new Docklands Light railway station will be next door by 2010 and it has an active residents group who want to be hands-on - so it offers the most amazing potential.
The site's history - from 14th C to the WW2 Blitz - is inspiring. This image of the Plaistow Landgrabbers has given us the project's title "What will the harvest be?" - they were a group of unemployed men who squatted land nearby in 1906, and harvested crops until eviction. We want the garden to somehow combine the productivity of the medieval monks, the nearby allottments and the Landgrabbers - with the ambition and opulence of a real 'civic park'!

The project will be slow - probably at least two seasons until permanent planting, but thats fine. I am really keen to develop the ideas slowly with the local users, and the Council need to fundraise of course....
I'll post more as we grow the project - in the meantime see:

Our project website and blog on the Gardens
Friends of Abbey Gardens website

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