First open as an interactive space on the Dartington Estate in South Devon last year, photographs from Siân Davey‘s ‘The Garden’ are on display as a free exhibition outside London’s Photographers’ Gallery until the end of November. Kirsteen McNish reflects on a work in which vulnerability, bravery, release and freedom are embroidered between the echinacea, foxgloves and meadowsweet.
“Everyone has a place in our garden. I am the garden. Those who enter are the garden. Without distinction, without separation.” — Siân Davey
The Garden was a project co-created by artist Siân Davey and her son Luke Davey on the Dartington Estate in South Devon and was, as she says, “an intentional act to cultivate a space that is grounded in love: a reverential offering to humanity.”
In a time of climate change, war and psychological division it feels like this space is a kind of revolution; The Garden offers a foundation to lay down connection, fears, and hope. Interesting too, perhaps, that The Garden evolved when Davey and her children were in the middle of a deep, painful family crisis, and that they decided to transform those experiences into growth.
One of the first things that strikes me about these photos is the sense of tenderness and intimacy. The trust between artist and the subject is evident in the gaze of the garden-dwellers — the people photographed here seem uninhibited and at ease; there is no pinch to the shoulders, chins are not tilted backwards in a self-conscious pose, we cannot see the lines of a set jaw muscle in the faces of those captured and nor does it feel contrived. The poses are vividly fluid: limbs entangled, bodies unclothed, gazes met disarmingly directly, and one feels the subjects have been given autonomy and control – a place to both experiment and truly be. Importantly, Davey’s view does not feel voyeuristic — all those who stepped into The Garden wanted to reveal something crucial within their personal stories, and it’s clear to me that some of them may well have remained unseen, secreted from view, if it weren’t for this place.
When I first visited the garden with my daughter last summer, I was struck by how it was populated. Numerous folk of different generations shared food at an open table surrounded by gourds climbing low stone walls; strangers communed, making plans and sharing stories. Davey worked instinctively and without fuss amongst the throng, appearing in her generous ease to have no fixed schedule, reacting to arrivals in real-time. Her subjects seemed to intuitively claim their space in a sure-footed way, somehow aware of the equal pegging between their bodies and the natural life vibrating around them.
One man sat upright on a soft pink chair placed between sweet peas, holding his dog on a lead; runner beans weaving around structures made of old branches behind him, sculptural and towering. A pair of teenagers, (perhaps sisters) danced light-footed and deer-limbed down the narrow pathways, and another young child in school uniform did backflips under the soft gaze of her mother. Someone else sat in the polytunnel, alone in thoughts with her laptop balanced on her knees. A man with thick dark hair tumbling around his shoulders sat confidently as he was photographed, tattooed torso bared with his arms bent at right angles. My own hormonal daughter, who has complex additional needs, was initially disgruntled to be out of routine, but soon found her own place deep between the flowers, crouching close to the earth, twizzling grass, listening to music from a small speaker, soaking it all in.
Later, as the light started to fade, I talked to a vibrant woman who told me she spent two decades as a Buddhist nun, and my daughter suddenly edged to her in a crab-like move, not leaving her side for nigh-on two hours. A sudden strange feeling flowed through me — a rare occurrence, I had the opportunity to relax, and I felt out-of-body. As my daughter sat in quiet, intense non-verbal communication with this woman, there was an overriding feeling that the garden was absorbing her, and she dissolving into it, held safely in its gauzy, diminishing light.
I was surprised that there were many photography students here too, whom I later learned were early to mid-career photographers or ex-students of Davey’s, free to do their thing in this space whilst she worked. One filmed people on a Super 8 camera while another took a photograph of someone reclining in the midst of jewel-coloured blooms, reminiscent of Waterhouse’s Ophelia floating downstream. Others shared their practice animatedly whilst raising glasses, talking about visiting the Friday market together whilst picking at bowls of food. Davey meanwhile wove through the flowers light-footed, working quickly and fluidly, watchful with a quick, intuitive intelligence. Everything was technicolour; surreal and oversized like a Hieronymus Bosch painting — as if we had re-entered a dream we vaguely remembered and didn’t want to fade. I left that evening feeling in the half-light like I had stepped into a kind of utopian mirage.
I do not hear Davey mention the word ‘inclusion’ when she speaks of The Garden because she doesn’t need to: a huge part of her working practice appears to be creating a space free of the confines of expectation, encouraging us to forget constraints and judgements of the outside world and be our most un-manipulated and vulnerable selves. She photographs mothers and children, those who have disabilities (including many tender portraits of her own youngest daughter, Alice, who is neurodivergent), and has welcomed many who perhaps feel disenfranchised, alone; isolated and somehow “apart” from the centre of what one might consider community. Siân and Luke speak of having toiled the earth outside their home with intention, hope and energy — “We cleared our long-neglected garden, researched native flowers, soil, biodiversity; sourced organic local seeds, and sowed under the moon cycles. We offered prayers along the way. We invited the pollinators and nature spirits. Luke and I obsessively shared our dreams, our insights and visions” — and it appears to have returned this effort in dividends, with a tumbling, blossoming, safe harbour for those who mark a part of their passage here, bearing witness to something that cannot exist without the symbiotic relationship between human and non-human life.
We often seem, as a flick through Instagram will tell you, to favour people-less landscapes, where the natural world is apart from us, but here in The Garden we are very much encouraged to step into the frame. We truly feel the sense of place – the fecundity, blossom and bloom; the plants and trees surging forward with their own life-cycles — and us within it, warts and all. In the photographs taken by Davey at the height of summer, many are seen close to the earth. We see the pigmentation of each participant’s skin, its flaws and creases, we see vulnerability, bravery, release and freedom embroidered between the echinacea, foxgloves and meadowsweet. Each body tells many stories, and each person meets themselves under Davey’s lens.
The Garden leaves you with an overwhelming sense that it is a place of story and of loosening societal shackles. As visitors came to the garden the night I was there — to be photographed or from sheer curiosity — people seemed to unfold, tears and laughter released into the night air in the relief of sharing, others quiet and contemplative, released from the whirring cogs of daily life. The Garden, Davey says, soon came to feel like “an intimate, confessional space — the portraits here are the people we met over our garden wall and the friends in our community.” It is far too simplistic simply to call the garden “a haven”; this is a multi-faceted project, as complex in its planting as the human psyche – and thus it is able to unlock many stories; to leave their layers and imprints behind in the ether. It’s not a here as an aesthetic salve. “As the garden evolved it became an expression of joy, interconnectedness, yearning, sexuality, and defiance” reflects Davey. “The garden became a metaphor for the human heart itself.”
When I first saw these photos exhibited last year in Dartington, I caught sight of some of those photographed exchanging stories, gathering to pay respect to Siân and Luke, celebrating this small democratic Eden and their place forever within it, long after the blooms had faded and returned to earth. Now, as it beams from the Soho Photographers’ Quarter in London, it feels like an even more important place to exhibit Davey’s work, giving passers-by the opportunity to stop between concrete, the rush of traffic, commuters, and sink into the unexpected, the human. The Garden was never meant to be a permanent fixture, but instead confronts us with our own mortality, our impermanence, and reminds us to dive in rather than drive by. It’s likely the legacy of this project will live on beyond the lives of all its participants, and, like pollen brushed onto the seam of a garment, it will leave a lasting mark on all those who encounter it. I am reminded of the words of musician William Doyle, in ‘Garden Of The Morning’…
lo and behold
love was made to dissolve
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Photographs from Siân Davey’s ‘The Garden’ are on display in the Photographers’ Gallery’s Soho Photography Quarter until 29th November, and are free to visit. More information here. You can follow Siân on Instagram here.
A signed artist’s book of ‘The Garden’ is available here from Trolley Books (£60).