This is the second time that artist Oliver Gather has been given the opportunity to realize one of his subtle participatory projects as part of this grant. As with his 2014 artistic investigation on the subject of “self-making and self-discovery”, the communicative aspect is at the forefront of his artistic “field research”. Once again, Gather leaves his studio and the museum-like exhibition space to talk to local residents, collect and reorganize their ideas in order to ultimately develop a systematic approach that enables his own view of things. Front gardens, in particular their planting with boxwood and other shrubs, which are always exposed to a vehement horticultural will to design through topiary, are the focus of this artistic analysis.

At the interface between public and private life, the design and planting of the front gardens is initially based on the personal creative ideas of the garden owners, possibly inspired by historical models, aesthetic design principles from design and art or even by very personal life situations as a model reflection of family structures and their history … Gather pursues these questions about the “why” by first making a graphic inventory with pen, brush and paint. Not the quick photographic note, but this careful examination of a subject between surface and insight, image and genuine horticultural passion opens up a view of bourgeois values and individual life models. In the jury’s opinion, the quality of the project lies in the interweaving of complex themes and artistic strategies with the lightness of simple questions that arise from everyday life. The depth of the project’s content only gradually reveals itself in all its political and social dimensions. Gather thus delivers an explosive examination of home and idyll from today’s perspective.