What is your garden telling you? Backyard photographs dig deep
Poetry of the earth (iii) 2016, Elsternwick household (detail). Hermann, Laura, Matt, and Harriet. Photo: Ponch Hawkes
Photographer Ponch Hawkes has a very big garden made even larger by the fact there is no fence between her and the neighbours. Out the front is the Westgarth railway station and out the back are two ponds, multiple terraces, fruit trees, shrubberies, bromeliads, ferns, orchids, vegetable beds, sculpture. It is endless.
It's also a joint endeavour with her artist partner but during summer Hawkes spent most of her time in other people's gardens on the opposite side of town. In December the Glen Eira City Council – which presides over some of Melbourne's most leafy south-eastern suburbs – commissioned Hawkes to photograph gardens throughout its locale.
It was an interesting choice of artist because, although Hawkes likes gardening, she was never going to keep her lens trained solely on the landscape. Hawkes, who has spent 44 years photographing everything from circus troupes to mothers and daughters to members of the South Gippsland Orchid Society, expressly draws out the personal.
Before she even took camera to garden for the project, she dispatched a survey to all participants asking them about their gardening histories and habits. The last of her questions was, "If your garden could talk, what would it say to you"? It's the ultimate in anthropomorphising backyards.
And it was a good indication of how the commission would pan out. After photographing the gardens, Hawkes asked each participant to provide a small object from their garden, and to hand-write something about the space. The photographs, objects and texts, collectively titled poetry of the earth, are included in an exhibition curated by Diane Soumilas at the Glen Eira City Council Gallery.
The objects Hawkes received ranged from a gardening glove to a jar of honey to an ikebana flower arrangement, and the texts reflected a variety of attitudes. No two subjects had the same approach to their garden. When Hawkes came on board the council had already received more than 70 expressions of interest from residents wanting to be part of the project, and she and Soumilas selected 10 spaces.
There are large, established gardens, newer Australian-plant-filled ones and a paved area composed entirely of pots. A highly manicured Japanese-style garden in Murrumbeena is juxtaposed with a tight courtyard in a busy street in Caulfield South and what is essentially an urban farm behind a share-house in Elsternwick. As well as nine private gardens, there is a community endeavour tended by children and residents of an aged-care facility.
Hawkes has taken two photographs for each space – one includes the gardeners and the other is a detail of the garden. In a nod to the domestic feel of the show, she has arranged the pictures on and around a shelf, alongside the objects and texts.
The emphasis here is not on perfection so much as everyday spaces tended by non-professional gardeners.
"I wrote them all a note first to say this would be an artistic interpretation, not a documentary photograph," Hawkes says. "I told them that I might photograph a part of the garden they didn't like, that I would see the gardens differently to the way they do."
But Hawkes also understands what makes a garden look good, and she knows how tiny details (steel reinforcing climbing frames, raked gravel or a side fence) can speak volumes. The common thread among all these spaces is the close relationship between the gardeners and their garden, whether it's the woman who has a bank of peak-condition hydrangeas that were once her mother's or the group-house of young professionals who spend their weekends growing food.
"I really just felt these people had a spiritual connection to the gardens, to having their fingers in the earth," Hawkes says. "Their creative expression was in their gardens, the way they organise them and love them. I find gardening is a form of art that people are passionate about but that doesn't always get recognised."
Not necessarily even by gardeners themselves. Hawkes says the participants might "have gardens and make gardens" but that didn't mean they spent a lot of time expressly thinking about that. "The process of me coming to see them meant they started looking at their gardens in a different way."
poetry of the earth is included in an exhibition called Sanctuary at the Glen Eira City Council Gallery until April 10. The exhibition also includes work by Natasha Bieniek, Jane Burton, Kevin Chin, Siri Hayes, Christopher Koller and Janet Laurence.
