THE FOURTH GREENHOUSE

 

The Fourth Greenhouse deals with the clash between nature and culture. It juxtaposes organic growing with human-made forms, and it explores the idea of enclosing nature in glass cases (greenhouses) in order to gain an artificial paradise or exotic, unoriginal environment. All these general problems are explained in the forgotten history of Vicomte Josef Taaffe, an English aristocrat living in the Czech countryside in the 19th century, and his fascination with botany. Taaffe who brought to his botanical garden plenty of exotic plants from across the world bankrupted due to his hobby and was forced to sell his property and botanical garden run wild. For this purpose, historical-theoretical research was carried out, which is summarised in a bilingual booklet (Czech/English) and is a part of the output. Furthermore, the result of the project is a fictional herbarium, which recalls exotic plants grown in Taffee’s greenhouse, six printed textiles with some of the plants, cultivation tables with soil, on which glass sculptures are installed. Glass sculptures, that refer to the equipment of greenhouses – these are both remakes of decorative and technical objects. Installation is completed by ready-mades exotically looking objects. The ideal situation, what is going to be realized as soon as measures around Covid19 allow us, is spatial installation, that would take place in abandoned metal construction of the greenhouse in Myslibořice. An important element would be to invite inhabitants of the village to come and talk about the rich history of the place, its importance, about greenhouse itself and the condition in which hothouse is today.

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Ongoing since 2018.