Marginal gardens, Amsterdam (NL)
A photographic exhibition
- Cliënt: Amsterdam investment fund for the Arts (AFK)
- Team: Sujata Majumdar (photographer), Patrick Mc Cabe
- Year, status: 2010, current
This project proposes to exhibit the individual ‘garden’ intiatives which are unique to Amsterdam as an international cultural and creative city. Building your own paradise or selecting a place and then fitting it out to suit your needs happens all over in the world.
Amsterdam however has developed a unique approach to it’s landscape; the city is small, densely populated, is mainly low rise and compact and everywhere there is water. Often this gives rise to highly original examples of gardens in particular in the margins of the city, at the edge of land and water, near trainlines etc.
The meaning of ‘garden’ is given a wider interpretation; in the city of Amsterdam they acquire different forms. The gardens are typically not planned and emerge informally. Space is limited in the city and everyone is busy looking for their own realm, ready to seize it and then cleverly manipulating its conditions to suit themselves. Nature in the city and the personalisation of public space made private forms the focus of this project.
The aim of this project is the realisition of a documentary of photographs with clear examples of these phenomena, in which the individual has shaped their garden in a clearly personal way. Think of the sidewalk gardens, a farm on a boat, and floating gardens completed with the planting of trees and shrubs on the canals and waterways of the city.
This is an art and landscape project, and is a result of an integral collaboration between Sujata majumdar, photographer; and landscape architect, Patrick Mc Cabe. Exhibition runs from 17 June 2010 to 29 August 2010 in the City Archive in the Vijzelstraat 32, 1017 HL Amsterdam. Opening is 17th June 2010, 16.30-18.30.