Sunflowers 1972

Curator: Ivor Abrahams' screenprint, simply titled "Sunflowers," offers a fascinating exploration of garden aesthetics. What's your initial take? Editor: It's so cheerfully artificial! Like a child's drawing of nature, but with this strange, almost unsettling, rigidity. Curator: Well, consider the process: a screenprint allows for precise layering and flat planes of color. It’s interesting how Abrahams employs this, mimicking mass-produced imagery, almost like garden ornamentation itself. Editor: Exactly! Those brick edges—so neat, so contained. It's as if nature is commodified, packaged for our consumption. I feel a longing for wildness looking at it. Curator: And that contrast is key. The very act of printing this image brings attention to the artificiality inherent in our relationship with the natural world. Editor: It’s definitely given me a fresh perspective on how we frame, literally and figuratively, our idea of a garden. Curator: Indeed, it reveals the layers of artifice shaping our perception of something as seemingly natural as a sunflower. Editor: Makes you think differently about visiting a garden.