Andrew Antoniou, A girl’s own garden, oil on canvas, 110 x 153 cm. Photo: Grainger Gallery.
The idea of a garden traditionally implied an enclosed or protected piece of land – something that was safe and separated from the wilderness. Plants came a bit later, as did our modern idea of a horticultural enclosure, whether it be the backyard veggie plot, the botanical gardens or Floriade.
Andrew Antoniou is a London-born, Sydney-based artist who once taught at the Canberra School of Art and has exhibited in Canberra on numerous occasions.
Last year, he was diagnosed with cancer. Although he is now clear of cancer, the health scare had an impact on his life and art, and he has embraced in his work the theme of gardens, as a place of refuge, where hope and beauty are celebrated.
In his artist’s statement, Antoniou quotes a classic bestseller from the late last century, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life (1997), by former monk and psychotherapist Thomas Moore.
Moore writes, “The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden.”
The gardens of Antoniou’s art are places of magical enchantment, where memories and daydreams combine, and nature and human endeavour collaborate to create something that should outlive the present and create something for posterity.
Andrew Antoniou, Gardener’s fortune, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 cm. Photo: Grainger Gallery.
The gardener, as found in the self-referential painting Gardener’s fortune, is a slightly naïve juggler who comes to bring enchantment to the garden.
A friend of mine once described gardening as an experiment in optimism. As Thomas Moore once argued, wonder and imagination are not childish qualities to be outgrown, but vital tools for coping with a world where alienation has become a norm.
Many figures in Antoniou’s works appear almost dreamlike, awkward in their movements and deliberate in their emotional intent. The artist treats his compositional spaces like stage sets, presenting elements for their symbolic and formal value.
Andrew Antoniou, North London Garden, oil on canvas, 51 x 40 cm. Photo: Grainger Gallery.
There are many memory paintings, including his North London Garden, which offers a glimpse of a walled garden set against a factory backdrop, bringing to mind William Blake’s “dark Satanic Mills”.
The garden is a small green oasis with tiny pegged-out vegetable plots.
The exhibition is dominated by two major oil paintings, Inside the Gates of Eden and A girl’s own garden, each over a metre and a half long.
The first revisits the Biblical Garden of Eden before the Fall with angelic gardeners busily at work looking after the botanical marvels. It appears to be set before Adam and Eve and the serpent arrived to spoil the party.
Andrew Antoniou, Inside the Gates of Eden, oil on canvas, 110 x 153 cm. Photo: Grainger Gallery.
In A girl’s own garden, three women plus a couple of wondrous birds cultivate the garden and celebrate the abundance of produce.
They are heavily drawn figures in brilliant garments who appear to be disproportionately large for their setting. The autobiographical context is not shared with the viewer, other than the idea that the garden is “a powerful metaphor where growth speaks of that beyond the material world”.
“Divination and ritual have always been deeply embedded in gardening practice to evoke the beings of the other world responsible for good harvest, divine beauty and spaces where these influences can come together with the everyday.”
Although Antoniou’s A Place Beyond may not be one of this artist’s most technically accomplished exhibitions, and I miss his monumental monochrome drawings for which he has national recognition, this celebration of the garden’s fecundity, beauty and magic has a quiet majesty.
Andrew Antoniou’s A Place Beyond is open at Grainger Gallery, 1/34 Geelong St, Fyshwick. It closes on 4 October. It’s open Thursday to Sunday, 11 am to 4 pm.
