THE CONCEPT BEHIND GARDENING – Sometimes &lotte takes me to extraordinary places. Landgoed Oud Amelisweerd is one of them. Close to home and already familiar to me, it’s a place I love to walk! But over the past few months, I wasn’t there just for a walk, i was there to create a new exhibition! Commissioned by Creative Coding Utrecht, I designed the exhibition Gardening, about people, nature and technology. The big question was how to connect the history of Amelisweerd, the manor house and its surroundings with the digital artworks. And I had the honour of finding an answer to that question.

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I started looking for a way to help you, as a visitor, navigate the sometimes complex themes of people, nature and technology. Because let’s be honest, contemporary art can sometimes be difficult to understand. At the start of your visit, you receive a punch card. For each artwork you encounter, you decide whether it belongs to the theme of culture, art, technology or analysis, all in relation to the overarching theme: nature. At the end of the route, you record your choices in a graphic diagram. This allows you to see your own results in relation to those of your fellow visitors.

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I also created a literal connection with nature by bringing the outdoors inside. To (literally) guide you through the manor house, moss can be found throughout the exhibition. And no, of course we didn’t use artificial moss. It’s all real! Just like all the plants featured in the exhibition. This way, Gardening literally comes to life! The moss pattern you see throughout the manor house is derived from the exhibition’s graphic identity, created by Ward Goes. In the visual identity, he wanted to show growth and flourishing, but also decay.

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Amelisweerd is the perfect location for this exhibition because it has been at the centre of a conflict between people and nature for years. If you live in Utrecht, you can hardly have missed it: there are plans to widen the A27 motorway, but this would mean that part of the nature surrounding Landgoed Amelisweerd would be lost. And local residents are determined not to let that happen. This debate shows exactly how important nature is to so many people.

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Have I made you curious about the exhibition and its beautiful surroundings? Then this is your chance! Come and discover the connections between people, nature and technology in a playful way. Gardening can be visited until 31 July 2022 at and around Landhuis Oud Amelisweerd.

Lotte de Jong

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P.S. You can also find the project on the website!