Double Take: Photography and the Garden

This exhibition curated by Kate Best, ‘brings together photographs by Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) with work by leading contemporary artists Sarah Jones, Helen Sear and Mark Edwards, all of whom have recorded a garden or returned to the theme of plants and gardens and whose work resonates with the historic gardens at Hestercombe’. ‘In Jones’s work, which she describes as ‘both documentary and imagined’, trees, plants and flowers have an allegorical and theatrical presence and are a motif in her ongoing exploration of photography’s formal and narrative possibilities. Gardens and parks initially appeared in Jones’s work as theatrical settings for her photographs. In her more recent ‘Rose Gardens’ series, extracts of which will be on display at Hestercombe, the plants have themselves become the subject, their theatrical presence, heightened by studio lighting, acting as a stand-in for human drama. Informed by the traditions of photography, in particular 19th century portraiture, as well as literature and philosophy, Jones’s photographs have a quiet power and unsettling beauty.’ Accompanying Catalogue with essay by Kate Bes