Garden Follies are ornate garden structures devoid of a practical function. At the height of their popularity in the 1700s and 1800s, their main purpose was symbolic, built into the landscape to signify a landowner’s wealth, importance, and control over the landscape.
Taking these structures as a conceptual starting point, members of the BarrieArt Club were invited to submit new and existing works that respond to the idea of the garden folly. The selected works illustrate contemporary considerations of gardens, landscapes, horticultural practices, and the impacts of the human desire to exert control over our natural environment. Taken together, the works ask us to reflect on our personal and collective relationships to the land that sustains us.
Featuring the work of: Lorraine Maher, Catherine Coulter, Frieda Ambroziak, Susan Medland, Joan LeBoeuf, Norman Robert Catchpole, Enrique Bravo, Karen Whytock-Lucas, Marilyn Black, and Val Losell.
Garden Follies was on view at the MacLaren Art Centre, Carnegie Room, June 17 - October 29, 2023.