Dimensions: image: 1500 x 1500 mm
Copyright: © Sarah Jones, courtesy Maureen Paley, London | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: So, this is Sarah Jones's "The Garden (Mulberry Lodge) VI," a large-scale photograph in the Tate collection. It's quite dark, and the figures almost seem staged. What strikes you about it? Curator: I’m drawn to how Jones uses the garden, traditionally a space coded with femininity and leisure, to explore adolescent female identity. Notice the tension between the girls' poses: one self-assured, the other withdrawn. Editor: Yes, almost like they're enacting different roles. Is Jones commenting on the performativity of gender? Curator: Precisely. The artificial lighting and staged composition push us to consider how societal expectations shape young women's self-perception. It makes you wonder about the pressures and complexities of growing up female, doesn’t it? Editor: It does. I never thought about gardens being spaces of gendered performance. Thanks for the insight! Curator: And thank you for making me look at it in a new way too!
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/jones-the-garden-mulberry-lodge-vi-p78251
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Like her images set in interior locations, such as dining rooms and sitting rooms, Jones's series of garden photographs highlights the artificial nature of much of the English domestic environment. Using evocative lighting and poses which suggest tension and ambivalence, Jones explores the nature of adolescence and of teenage repression, within the context of suburban living. Much of her work explores the notion of the uncanny in the everyday, or the way in which the familiar can become charged with unfamiliarity. Gallery label, September 2004
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