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Wednesday, July 4, 2001 rU*GES7 STOWFJ O f iBXXNC HANTS IN JHt A THE OAKVILLE BEAVER C1 BOX PLANTS 580 50% a box All Annual Pots I Hanging Baskets ; 5558 Trafalgar Road (905) 878-0722 Arts & Entertainment Oakville BeaverA&E Editor: Carol Baldwin 845-3824 (Ext. 254); Fax: 337-5567; E-mail: baldwin@haltonsearch.com Story by Lois Crawford Photos by Peter C. M cCusker Societal impact of gardening featured in current exhibit itting in my garden, I survey the ragged remains of rain-battered peonies and the hundreds of wild violets, strawberries, asters and daisies that threaten my master design plan as they continue to thrive. Tiny have appeared in a rose petal and pansies dangle limply over the edge of a pot, their roots deci mated by microscopic creatures. This is the tyranny of a domestic garden. There is little room for a democratic live-and-letlive approach. As Lorraine Johnson, art historian/gardener/writer, recently said, "A garden is a place of negotiation with nature." I seem to be negotiating less, allowing more and more of the indigenous plants to remain. Am I turning into what Su Ditta, curator of the cur rent exhibition at Gairloch Gardens, calls a "guerrilla gardener?" Examples of guerrilla gardeners have made the news in recent years when neighbours don't appreciate renegade front gardens. Judges, how ever, have upheld gardeners' rights to have wild flowers and grasses wherever they want, as long as they don't exceed a certain height - and are not ragweed. There is no doubt that cultural and societal issues impact gardening styles. But the newly opened exhibition at Oakville Galleries is about much more than just gardening trends. The artists involved in Earthly Delights: deep gardening have attempted to send viewers a variety of mes sages using the garden or nature as their medium. Ditta, Lorraine Johnson and David Rokeby comprised what was billed as a discussion panel on art and the contemporary garden, to take place at Gairloch Gardens. However, the so-called dis cussion pn the exhibition turned out to be three separate talks with Rokeby waiting in the wings until late afternoon. Ditta's talk ranged widely from what she called "garden pom ," as manifested in some gar dening magazines, to the tension between private and public gardens. As long ago as the 16th century, Hieronymus Bosch filled his sensual painting The Garden o f Earthly Delights with erotic symbolism and an underlying morality lesson. Ditta admits to steal ing her title, Earthly Delights: deep gardening, from Bosch's famous triptych. An avid gardener herself, and a former curator at the National Gallery, Ditta told the large group attending the discussion, that she was struck by the extent to which artists use landscape in their work. The variety of context has run from the bucol ic - cows grazing in a pasture - to depictions of private and public gardens to the sensual closeups of flowers made by Georgia O 'keeffe. More recent "new media" works, such as those shown in the Oakville exhibit, delve deeper into politi cal, social and cultural messages using the gar den to advance their ideas. Johnson's insightful slide presentation high lighted the politics of gardening. In her talk, Johnson, who writes for Canadian Gardening, noted that in 1597 nature was considered a threat; therefore, it was tamed in the garden. "Our ideas about nature and gardens have changed over time," she said. "W ilderness used to exclude humans. Now it is not separate - we impact it." Finally, Rokeby patiently attempted to explain the technology involved in producing his interac tive surveillance images of Gairloch Gardens and S holes A rt Exhibition Review his motives for doing so. For years, while living on Spadina Avenue in Toronto, he watched the seasons change in one lonely tree. Rokeby is one of Canada's leading "new media" practitioners, having recently won the Petro Canada award in this category. At the discussion; Rokeby was still engaged in the struggle of hum anity/technology versus nature. His camera, which had been mounted on the old porch roof of Gairloch, had slipped so that instead of its pivotal tracking of the gardens, it was shooting skies and clouds. My guerrilla reaction was so what - it's all part of the garden's environs. Keep it, David. Don't root it out. Rokeby was commissioned for this piece to create archival footage of Gairloch Gardens throughout the seasons, taking daily imagery in four- or five-minute sweeps. The program he designed for the camera provides a collage of overlapping images and activities that appear and disappear like magic. The garden is shown as it is being constructed, and throughout the season. It is rather strange to be standing inside the gallery looking at the video recording of the gar den, when just a few feet away is the view through the windows. However, this artist says he is interested in the role of natural historian, and to that end, the computer is "an alternative sense organ to recover and make visible things that I didn't see." W hen Rokeby punned, "debugging (the com puter program) takes a great amount of time," it was just another way we gardeners could relate, as is the losing-track-of-time thing that happens whether you are working in the garden or at the computer. But Rokeby is not the only one doing the edit ing. For example, he scanned a tree, only to have it "edited out" by tree trimmers, who had cut it down. In the new footage, there is no tree. Other artists exhibiting videos in this exhibi tion, using the garden or nature to deliver their message, are Shani Mootoo, Mike MacDonald, Joanne Bristol, Rhonda Abrams, M ichele Waquant, and Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak. Where Sweetness Lingers is a single channel video by Mootoo. Using softly filtered light, a female figure is seen swooning in a garden as she fantasizes about her secret and forbidden love. This voyeuristic sensation continues with M acDonald's silent video in natural speed of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. It is mesmerizingly beautiful in close-up. B ack-to-back with M acD onald's work is Abrams' 1987 video/performance piece, Lament o f the Sugar Bushman. It begins with a man sit ting in front of an ugly clear-cut site near Sud bury. He sings his lament, "Give me back my trees", with baritone sweetness. Acid rain had killed the sugarbush, so it was cut down for lum ber. A violinist also insinuates passion into this powerful ecological/activist piece. Steele and Tomczak show an elegant little video series Method on the Run, with single words superimposed on single shots of flowers and animals. An example is the phrase "blood is on your hands." They recall the '60s era of flower power, animal rights and reason-versus-passion. David Rokeby, a new media artist, has placed a surveillance camera on the porch roof of Oakville Galleries at Gairloch Gardens, top left, photographing daily imagery of the gardens (as seen above and below) in four- or five-minute sweeps throughout the season. This is only one of many videos in the Oakville Galleries exhibition Earthly Delights: deep gardening. This is an interesting exhibition. Artists, once again, alert us to important and sensitive issues and have done it gently through the manipulation of nature's images using the very latest technology - video. Earthly Delights: deep gardening will contin ue at Gairloch Gardens, 1306 Lakeshore Rd. E. until Aug. 22. The gallery is open from 1 to 5 p.m., Tuesdays to Sundays. Admission is free. For more information, call 905-844-4402. Fabulous 4 STEALS S a m -S p mO N L Y ! $799 3gal. Andora Compact Spreading Juniper / each reg . s2 9 " FIAMB0R0UGH Hwy #6 ot 5 * Concession SECOND WEEK Saturday, July 7 8 a m -6 p m (M Y ! 1gal. 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