DAD RADIO #23 | art & the garden

DAD RADIO #23 reflects on the significance of gardens, growing and their relationship to creative practice. Dover-based sculptor Nicolas Deshayes and curator, educator and researcher Anna Colin discuss their connections to gardening, the dynamics of artistic and horticultural labour, the politics and potentialities of realising artwork for outdoor spaces.

We also hear about the recent 2021 edition of Margate NOW, ‘Sunken Ecologies’, guest curated by Anna and including a new sculptural commission by Nicolas. ‘Sunken Ecologies’ took on the human-made natural environment and the possible role, participation and responsibility of cultural practitioners in caring for, engaging with, reclaiming and reimagining green spaces.

Nicolas Deshayes makes sculpture from a wide range of industrial processes and materials such as cast iron, factory ceramics and vitreous enamel. Drawing on the history and temperature of these processes he explores the relationship between industrialisation and the human body.

Anna Colin is an independent curator, educator and researcher based in Deal, Kent.  She is a co-founder and former director of the free, independent art school and community space Open School East now based in Margate. Alongside her freelance activities, which straddle the curatorial and the pedagogical and increasingly engage the natural environment and open spaces, she is training in horticulture and garden design, while completing a PhD in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham. Anna’s doctoral research unpacks the notion of the alternative in multi-public educational organisations from the late 19th century to the present, in the UK and further afield.

Presented and produced by Louisa Love + Louise Webb for the DAD Digital Festival 2021 at www.dadonline.uk, funded by Arts Council England. First broadcast by DCR FM 10th December 2021.