it's always greener between the ha-ha wall

'It's always greener between the ha-ha wall'
'Utopia#' Bradley&Bownes, Orangery, Clapham 2015
one way window mirror, shelving, plants, coins, artificial hedging, canvas, buddha ornaments, glass splash guard, copper leaf; height approx 2.5m, dimensions vary

I arrived too early, but fortunately Ann-Marie - who lives opposite - held a spare set of keys. She talked about being an art student in the 60's and activism. From the estate's third floor I could see the shard and all those other crystals of the commercial district far ahead; giving the illusion of identifiability...

A one-way mirrored window containing synthetic and potted plants. Framed windows look onto the estate opposite, whilst its mirrored side prevents from seeing in, serving as both a kind of UV protecting conservatory and observation room looking out. From there, sometimes the plants' silhouettes can be seen, but more often a warped reflection returns. This is hybridised with a shelving display which holds the plants and objects. The idea seeks a relationship between stately Georgian garden-scapes - in direct reference to the site's history - and the contemporary art exhibit; since both behave as places sensitive to formalism. It considers the Auricula Theatre (display shelves which attempted to bring the quaint living room vibe to the garden. Its name coming from the auricula flower) and the great 'Ha-ha wall' feature (a disguised sunken fence) the classic English feature of phony openness. Comparatively, today's London is equally a controlled wild and necessary integration of imposed barriers and we find in the housing estate more sophisticated urban forms of this.
Such paradoxes are of course also drawn from utopian imagery; in which the Elysian exists through a controlled, esoteric environment. Whilst plants associated with office, public and space-filling home decor are selected for their immediate cultural associations with affordable 'brightening up' of spaces. Again, the captured exotic made common. I was thinking of those commissioned mid-Georgian paintings where domestication and savagery unintentionally never seem far apart, and in doing so, treated the work as a sort of totem-canvas. But like Uvedale Price's An Essay on the Picturesque as compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful, who repelled strict forms of classicism - advocating for more ruggedness - so too our contemporary city is a product of framing and neglect, in which the wealthier boroughs could well be compared to those classical garden manors surrounded by less cultivated grounds. (In this regard, you could argue that the aesthetics of class consciousness in England has barely changed in 200 years).
Although, not wanting to be overly referential, white is one acknowledgement; gallery walls, stately pillars of lament built on slavery and Arcadian clouds signalling an English dusk. White hangs on living room walls and provides a theatrical backdrop to portraits. Tinted HSBC-blue effects the windows in an otherwise modest display of refuge on my own part. This is my little London.
.....
A money plant offers a trickle down of pennies held up by a glass splash guard acting as a shelf and ceiling to a diseased prayer plant below. This contains miniature laughing Buddha collectibles submerged in copper coins. Beneath this an artificial hedge is attached to a canvas and disguises the brick support. Is the hedge the quintessential English medium I wonder? A copper leaf is applied to the top edges perhaps as if to propose that the coins have dripped down. On the top shelf my barbed wire cacti provide a foreground. The wind constantly threatened the structure.

I leave just as the autumn sun says goodbye. It was the last warm day of the year and my last attempt at an exhibit before leaving for China.