Dimensions: support: 404 x 304 mm
Copyright: © The estate of Keith Arnatt | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Keith Arnatt’s photographic print, simply titled Gardeners, presents a study in the aesthetics of the everyday. Editor: My first impression is one of subtle unease. There's something about the man's rigid posture and the pruned, almost artificial, quality of the garden that creates a sense of constraint. Curator: Absolutely. Arnatt is engaging with very British notions of identity, class, and the performance of social roles, particularly within the context of suburban life. The garden becomes a stage. Editor: And the act of gardening itself represents a specific kind of labour, a continuous reshaping and controlling of nature. The material reality of maintaining that pristine facade is very present. Curator: The man, posed as a gardener, confronts the societal expectations of labor and the idealization of domesticity. His expression is far from celebratory; it’s almost confrontational. Editor: Right, and consider the tonal range of the photographic print. It highlights the textures of the house, the garden, even the man's clothing, underscoring the tangible, crafted nature of this entire scene. Curator: It's a work that makes us question the narratives we construct around work, leisure, and the very idea of "the good life." Editor: A very meticulous, and quietly unsettling composition, Arnatt's "Gardeners" has made me think about the labour inherent in creating such ordinary images. Curator: For me, it’s that question of how we perform our identities, the garden acting as a metaphor for the cultivation of self.
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Gardeners 1978–9 is a large series of black and white photographs that depicts individuals standing outdoors in the gardens they tend, which vary in character from sprawling fields in the countryside to small urban front gardens. Although the gardeners’ poses, expressions and clothing differ, they are all shown full-length standing in the mid-ground of the scene and looking towards the camera. The selection of forty prints from this series in the Tate collection (Tate T13087–T13126) was made and exhibited in 1979 for Keith Arnatt’s solo exhibition at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London. A different selection of prints was exhibited in his 1989 touring solo exhibition Rubbish and Recollections (Cambridge Darkroom; Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Ffotogallery, Cardiff). Arnatt took the photographs that make up this series during 1978 and 1979. To do so, he visited the sitters at their homes, photographing them in their own gardens. The series title, Gardeners, focuses the viewer’s attention on the gardeners rather than the gardens themselves, although the way in which Arnatt presents the individuals surrounded by the grass, foliage and sometimes concrete of their settings, with little else in view, suggests the intimate connection between the gardeners and their land. The repetitive nature of the composition and poses across each of the forty photographs also has the effect of drawing together a diverse group of people who have been photographed as a result of a shared hobby.
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