Raqib Shaw These Artists Find Fertile Soil in Tending Gardens as Artworks

From lush greenery to austere rock conglomerations, in these artists' hands, gardens are an extension of the creative practice.

By Emily Steer

Plants are an enduring subject for artists, whether painting and drawing them, sculpting them in lasting materials, or bringing actual foliage into gallery spaces. But some fully immerse themselves, creating permanent gardens as living artworks. Many artists’ gardens explore conceptual themes that are present in their wider practices, from environmental collapse to poetry, escapism and self-expression.

These artists turn the idea of the garden as something quaint on its head, pushing the scientific or conceptual limits of their tended plots of land. In their hands, plants become not just a subject, but form and material in and of themselves. They are continuations of rich artistic practices, celebrating the intertwined nature of human creativity and the land it springs from.

Raqib Shaw

Raqib Shaw has created a similarly wild refuge for himself in the middle of Peckham. Situated next to South London Gallery’s Fire Station building in a former sausage factory, Shaw’s complex features a paradisal rock garden that belies its city location. Many aspects of the garden appear in his intricate paintings, from the wooden swing that features in Summer Solitude I (2021) to the worn stones in La Tempesta (after Giorgione)(2019). While his paintings often appear to have come from the depths of his imagination, they in fact draw on references to art history and to his own luscious home.

“Everything does appear in the paintings because these are life studies,” he told Artnet News in 2022. “During lockdown I couldn’t believe it: the nurseries were still open. Within two hours’ drive, I had been to every single nursery, and it was really fabulous that I was able to compose while keeping the paintings in mind. When they all flower, they are exactly as you see in Agony in the Garden. And when they see them, everyone says, ‘That can’t be England.’ But it is England!”