above: proposed finish.

 

 

 

If Monty Python lived in a typical suburban street what might their garden look like?

 

'The Graveyard Garden' is a piece of black humour about how we live today; a satirical swipe at mass conformity, challenging the status quo that sees the same five or six hackneyed templates for suburban gardens copied and repeated in every street in the UK.

 

Added to the bog-standard aspirational 'wallpaper' of a block-paved driveway and neat and tidy lawn are six headstones taken out of context to create a metaphor aimed at 'killing off', or at least subverting and breaking up, the monotony of camouflaged 'masked' existence where we police genuine difference into submission.

 

Removing art from the largely middle-class ghetto of the gallery can democratise ideas and potentially inspire others to 'fire up' their own imaginations to literally alter the world around them in a positive pro-active manner. Should people be protected from fresh ways of seeing, or can a new 'political' form of urban gardening take root? How much difference can people tolerate? Whose street is this anyway?!

 

'The Graveyard Garden' is also a formalistic exercise: a 3-dimensional comic strip featuring six headstone shaped panels and a house/driveway/lawn bleed across the rest of the 'page' telling a story via coded philosophy.

 

Is this modern art, punk gardening, or arty-farty bollox? 

 

There are several quotes upon the first headstone, opening with one from Frankenstein... 

 

"THE MOON GAZED ON MY MIDNIGHT LABOURS, WHILE, WITH UNRELAXED AND BREATHLESS EAGERNESS, I PURSUED NATURE TO HER HIDING PLACES."

 

--commenting on mankind's narcissistic arrogance that they can exploit and dominate nature with no consequences (from a character representative of the ruling elite [then as now]; a character who created life in their own image, then treat it badly - we certainly don't turn out the way we do by chance, we're 'conditioned', brainwashed into compliance with the dominant ideology). We obeyyyyy! But does this mean we should never challenge, should we just maintain the status quo, even when our planet is being damaged?; when the next generation are being told they'll not have it as good?; when the poor and most vulnerable are persistently demonised - used as distractions while vital services, wages and benefits are cut?; meanwhile, the architects of this self-inflicted mess, the super-rich, just keep on getting richer!  

 

"THEY'RE COMING TO GET YOU, BARBARA!" - That's from Night of the living dead

 

"THEY'RE HERE ALREADY! YOU'RE NEXT! YOU'RE NEXT!" - Invasion of the Bodysnatchers; are we all the bloody same?! What happened to the characters in that movie who fought back? Oh aye...

 

'C?' is written on a black reflective stone on one of two pages with an inscribed tassel between them, suggesting the blank page is a mirror into our imagination: the potential of people to affect their own change rather than waiting for others to do it for them - rewrite your own life! What do you see? On the blank page opposite the 'C?' you 'C'  yourself. You literally see yourself. The 'C?' is gold coloured hinting towards alchemy's quest for self knowledge. The 'C?' is also a link to the sea, where all things (including our imagination) evolved from. We're still evolving. Into what? Well, that's somewhat up to us.

 

'LANGWIJ' is inscribed upon a reclaimed headstone suggesting that the best way to counter the dulling 'autopilot' affect of cliche and subservience is the old idea about using original language instead. And since all we see, hear and feel is interpreted via language, then to alter 'reality' we need to utilise language cleverly. The way our masters do.

 

'THE GRAVEYARD GARDEN' is a title stone, followed by a two-part joint inscription upon a flesh coloured heart-shaped vase and a metre high red obelisk...

 

"BELIEVE IN NOTHING.... 

 

--SO EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE!"

 

The vase features the Greek letters Alpha and Omega - the beginning and end of that particular alphabet, suggesting the potential of everything in-between - the potential of the universe! "It's decorated with a feminine downwards pyramidal-triangle (you might want to think of something on the female body that might resemble such) and connects to the obelisks masculine upward pyramidal-triangle (again, think of something on the male body that resembles such) and then consider what happens should they, erm, come together!"¹ This potential Star of David in the making suggests that perhaps the best way to end the problems that separate us - rich/poor, old/young, black/white, local/immigrant, worker/non-worker, straight/gay, etc - is by countering the patriarchal capitalist ideology that defines and divides the world today. This could create a more imaginative, creative world where men and women are genuinely equal, where masculine brute force isn't the defining mode of the day. Is the 'rat race' the only way to live, or are other world's possible?  

 

You just need to keep an open flexible mind! 

 

Everything is possible, provided nothing is set in stone (ironically enough)!

 

'The Graveyard Garden' is neither morbid - as a local Baptist representative stated (to the press), "--if the stones aren't in memory of anyone, can they really be called gravestones?" - nor dull, but using the tropes of gothic horror it seeks to create a timely and visceral provocative alternative to the deadening effects of the status quo, awakening us, and positively challenging the frequently held notion, "but what can I do?"

 

Because we do need to do something. And not just me, but as many of us as possible. As quickly as possible.

 

Gardens are creative spaces, there's no reason why they can't be art, which can be challenging and not always to everybody's tastes - it's not a popularity contest. Influential American psychologist Carl Rogers put it like this: "The very essence of the creative is it's novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it." 

 

Finally, in addition, 'The Graveyard Garden' uses the highest quality materials: white granite block-paved driveway; carved granite stones - headstones, if you like, and (should I have the opportunity to complete my garden) top of the range artificial grass surrounding the stones to soften the overall effect. 

 

"Gardens exist, it seems, simply as inspiration for other gardens. Which is no doubt why we see the same plants and the same hackneyed design everywhere. It is as if the only reason we would read a novel is to take examples from it of what words we could use in our own novel, and perhaps the scenes we could incorporate, undisguised, into our own plot." - Anne Wareham, creator of Veddw House Garden