An English Garden
An English Garden is an artist book which traces Gabriella Hirst’s research into the relationship between gardening and power, focusing upon a rare species of cold war era rose titled the Rosa floribunda 'Atom Bomb’. This publication accompanies the installation ‘An English Garden’, by Gabriella Hirst with Warren Harper, commissioned by The Old Waterworks and Metal for Estuary 2021, situated at Gunners Park as part of the festival.
The publication compiles both written investigations and a visual essay of watercolour botanical drawings, mind maps, garden plans and diagrams. An English Garden speculates upon possible links between the British Imperial programme of ‘gardening the world’, the enduring impact of nuclear colonialism, and the political symbolism of plants, focussing namely on the cultivated rose plant as a highly manipulated ornamental species weighed down by powerful and contradictory meaning. Each copy of An English Garden comes with the pamphlet ‘How to Make a Bomb’ as an insert.
Title: An English Garden
Author(s)/Editor(s): Gabriella Hirst, Warren Harper
Publisher: The Old Waterworks
Pages: 84
Dimensions: 250 x 200 mm
Format: Softcover
Year: 2021 (edition of 250)
Designed by: Design Print Bind
Limited edition of 250 copies.
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