Examining Kew Gardens and Le Désert de Retz, two noted eighteenth-century romantic gardens, this exhibition of colour photographs focuses on the miniature architectural monuments also known as follies. Referencing past civilizations and the philosophies they represent, the folly serves as a locus of contemplation within the garden complex.
Conceived within the larger constellation of design elements: paths, plantings, ponds, etc., the folly is a representation of social and historical ideas rather than a site of shelter. Dispersed throughout garden grounds, they are read at the pace of a walker, inviting an active engagement with the dynamics of light, space, and time, as integral aspects of philosophical reflection. Apart from their philosophical and ideological functions, the gardens these photographs represent are also complex spatial schemes laid out in the interest of pleasure and discovery for all who visit them. Engaging with concepts reaching back to the Greeks, they serve to occupy the senses in the present.
Katy McCormick's photography deals with the relationships between landscape architecture, its histories and the way we perceive representations of space and time.
Her solo exhibitions have appeared in Toronto at G+Galleries, the Premiere Dance Theatre, Alliance Française Gallery, Gallery TPW, The Photo Passage, and Jamie Kennedy at the ROM, and elsewhere at The Photographer's Gallery, Saskatoon, The Other Gallery, Banff, and at Espace VOX and the Eleanor London Public Library, in Montréal.
