The Hawke Centre will commence its 2014 program with an exhibition and forum: Cultivating Modernism: reading the modern garden 1917-71, co-presented with the Architecture Museum at the University of South Australia, 18 February.
Cultivating Modernism will be an inspiration to all with an interest in gardens, books, and the recent past.
Exploring modernism from the perspective of the Australian garden, author and curator Richard Aitken will chart garden making from World War One until the dawn of environmentalism in the 1960s and 1970s.
His lecture will showcase garden design during a turbulent period from pre-war European functionalism to a more relaxed post-war Californian modernism, showing how the garden was a necessary prop for modernism’s reality.
An exhibition viewing will follow the public lecture from 7pm – 8pm, in which Cultivating Modernism will come alive through a kaleidoscopic mix of rarely seen books, prints, and ephemera charting garden making during this period. The exhibition is an Adelaide Fringe event, and will be presented at the Kerry Packer Civic Gallery until 31 March.
The Architecture Museum will host a complementary exhibition, drawing on rare art deco prints and publication of French exhibitions. Cultivating modernism: French garden style of the 1920s and 1930s will provide a rich coverage of Cubist and other decorative approaches to garden design.
