the garden
MOSTRA (2020) Instituto da Agua, Lisbon, Portugal
Drawing upon visual culture that surrounds our everyday life, The Garden takes on the subject matter and form of The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450), using analogue collage to explore our contemporary relationship to pleasure, longing, belonging and morality.
The central section aligns itself with Bosch’s interpretation of Purgatory as a world that is a playground. The players are engrossed in themselves and the immediate abundance of pleasure surrounding them. Combining photography of nature, garishly coloured tissue and glittered paper with imagery of the illusions and desires that consumer culture perpetuates, the scene is set to the (now) present day. The reference to time in the form of imagery of clocks and watches alludes to our obsession with productivity and timekeeping.
In comparison, Bosch’s world is fairly timeless - not of its time nor of the future, fusing together various external and personal references to create his own cryptic universe. The choice to turn to the Old Masters came from a need to explore scale in both size and subject matter that boldly encompasses the big questions of humanity, however (and especially) inconclusive. By working alongside the Bosch triptych, through the careful process of cutting and pasting and aligning the characters, I entered his work on a different level to that if I was purely a spectator.
What attracted me to this particular triptych by Bosch is the deviation from the generalised viewpoint of the world at that time. The original was painted during a period of discovery and expansion, whereas nowadays we are coming to terms with the idea that our resources are seemingly finite. As consumer culture perpetuates excess that threatens humanity and our ecological system, the need to think about our place within the world, as an individual within a greater whole is becoming more apparent.
The central section aligns itself with Bosch’s interpretation of Purgatory as a world that is a playground. The players are engrossed in themselves and the immediate abundance of pleasure surrounding them. Combining photography of nature, garishly coloured tissue and glittered paper with imagery of the illusions and desires that consumer culture perpetuates, the scene is set to the (now) present day. The reference to time in the form of imagery of clocks and watches alludes to our obsession with productivity and timekeeping.
In comparison, Bosch’s world is fairly timeless - not of its time nor of the future, fusing together various external and personal references to create his own cryptic universe. The choice to turn to the Old Masters came from a need to explore scale in both size and subject matter that boldly encompasses the big questions of humanity, however (and especially) inconclusive. By working alongside the Bosch triptych, through the careful process of cutting and pasting and aligning the characters, I entered his work on a different level to that if I was purely a spectator.
What attracted me to this particular triptych by Bosch is the deviation from the generalised viewpoint of the world at that time. The original was painted during a period of discovery and expansion, whereas nowadays we are coming to terms with the idea that our resources are seemingly finite. As consumer culture perpetuates excess that threatens humanity and our ecological system, the need to think about our place within the world, as an individual within a greater whole is becoming more apparent.
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»The Garden (2020)
Mixed media collage on paper
10 frames (104cm x 75cm)
Click on individual panels to enlarge
Photography: Alexandre Ramos 2019
