1989-91 Shima: Island and Garden

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The photographs in this series were taken over a period of four years, between 1988 and 1991, a time when I returned to my family home at Eagles Nest in Cornwall to become involved in the garden’s regeneration after the severe frosts of January 1987. The idea for the book originated in a desire to make something that was accessible to people in the same way that a garden is accessible as part of life. The title Shima – a Japanese word for Island and garden -bears reference to both boundary and containment.

“Unlike documentary photographs or representations of the past, some of the photographs have an independent existence. They seem to be taken at a moment when something has happened and is about to happen, a shifting moment full of potential. They are often a surprise to me, I saw one thing and was given something else. They generate ideas and continue to inform me. Others are simply a presentation of a place, this place, how it is.”

Shima is a series of 12 Cibachrome photographs, 26.4 x 39.5 cm. A book titled Shima: Island and Garden accompanies the series.

First exhibited New Work: Sculpture & Photographs, Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall 1992

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