Friday 10 September 2010

The Ghosts of the Weed Garden

Kathryn Campbell Dodd - The Ghosts of the Weed Garden - photo: Kirsten Hinks

Yesterday, I installed a new piece of work in the National Botanic Garden of Wales in Carmarthenshire. It is part of an exhibition called Exposed - textiles in the open by Fibre Art Wales members. I have a space inside the Great Glasshouse.

I'm really pleased with the work in situ. The title of the work comes from the book The Divided Self by R.D.Laing, it is a line from a poem written by one Dr Laing's Schizophrenic patients. In the strange atmosphere of the glasshouse, slightly unreal and artificial, the work takes on other dimensions for me. I have used the old garden tools of my Grandfather along with a wheel barrow and wellington boots of my own that have gone beyond repair. I think it is fascinating that the simple act of covering something with white fabric signifies the idea of a ghost - it suggests that the object (or person) is either permanently or temporarily out of use; it becomes 'other'.

The exhibition opens on Friday 10 September at 2pm and continues until November 2010.

4 comments:

  1. I wish I was nearer.
    It looks so fascinating.

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  2. i will go and see this:)

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  3. What a beautiful spot for your beautiful piece. Congratulations K!
    That white covering immediately disengages us from the object as familar. I was thinking about in films how rooms full of the dust covers draped over not in use furniture in grand houses always lead to spooky moments and lost memories.

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  4. Oh my God. Say it's not true. Since I had also written a long-short story titled 'Schizophrenia Simplex' in 2000 from that line of poem? I read the Divided Self by Dr Laing and thought she (the schizophrenic patient) said she was with the ghosts from the weed gardens and not coming back.

    In fact, I remember that's the reason she couldn't be cured or she was the only one not cured.

    Good to find your page as I searched my old text so I put it on WordPress.

    Bravo.

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