The Art of Colonial Gardening

The Art of Colonial Gardening July 7, 2006

“It’s Un-Australian” John Howard.

“Nobody owns the fire” Uncle Kev Buzzacot – Arabunna Elder.

A garden that breathes with bodies. Snippets of history intermingled with dialogues of the now. The dream of a place. Controlled and wild. The Art of Colonial Gardening is an exploration of land, time and bbq’s. A look into our colonial past with an eye for the future. Notions of transience in the Australian cultural landscape. How we got here? How we will survive? Why we can’t leave?

It takes form of an Australiana pastiche, mixed with media and puppets that tinker in large marquees. It’s a space of lost time, songs of forgetting and visual/durational performance lost in the shadows of history.

Taking cue from Jared Diamonds “Collapse”, Frederick Mc Cubbins paintings , the music of bush bands, the poetry of Henry Lawson , the kitsch of Aunty Jack , the vaudevillian silliness of Buster Keaton and the Situationist praxis “Under the street ; the beach”.

The garden is ourselves, seeded by fear and growing. What’s in the distance? Collapse or survival? It’s an organic manifesto for the future.