30:
Well, the shifting garden at 4A has now packed up and shifted elsewhere (or a variety of elsewheres actually). Thanks to everyone who stopped and had a look, took home a beetroot or kale seedling or a seed packet, or sat down for a cup of tea and a lotus chip and a chat about gardens, cities and other good things. Thank you also to the marvellous team at 4A – Aaron, Summar, Ping, Yu ye, & Sam who did their best to keep everything nicely watered. We’ve amassed quite an archive of photos and will be posting them here over the next little while, in the meantime here are a few from the final weeks.
  
  
ABOVE RIGHT: lotus chips and taro cake at the closing party.
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A nice little article on the Garden (by Lucy Fokkema) on the Throw Shapes blog – read it here.
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Saturday’s workshop saw home-made pumpkin scones with rosella jam & Western Sydney backyard rosellas, lots of tea (lemongrass from the garden and jasmine flowers from China), and various drawings of people’s next-door neighbour’s gardens/architectural plans for what we could do in the gallery. … And the beginnings of a seed exchange, which will continue to take shape over the next week.
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08:
Make-do Garden City is up and running, with our starter crop of eggplant, okra, chilli, lemongrass, spinach, various lettuces etc. all doing remarkably well in their greenhouse-shopfront. In the Do Garden, the lotus is dying back for winter but still making an effort to look lovely. We’ve begun unpacking furniture and other assorted things from our cart so conversations can soon get underway there.
There’s a workshop/event happening this Saturday 11am – 1pm, a good time to come down if you haven’t yet visited. It’s going to be a fairly loose affair involving tea and talking, with drawing and seed-swapping on the side. Feel free to bring along your own edible plants, or seeds, and/or drawing materials (although rice paper and ink will be provided).
Here’s how it looked at the beginning:
and some details
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Stay tuned for more images next week.
Photos by Arunas / Tessa Zettel & Karl Khoe
21:
Our new solo exhibition at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art opens this Thursday. It will be evolving for the next six weeks, so please do drop by later and see where it ends up travelling to – more details below:
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TESSA ZETTEL & KARL KHOE
MAKE-DO GARDEN CITY
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
181 – 187 Hay St. Sydney
26 March – 8 May 2010 / Open Tues – Sat, 11am – 6pm
Opening Thursday 25 March, 6 – 8pm
4A’s ground floor turns into Make-do Garden City, a place where fictional Chinese gardens of the seventeenth century meet with the personal histories and potential sustainable futures of Sydney’s Chinatown. Tessa Zettel & Karl Khoe will be conducting a six-week program of talking, making and growing that explores new ways of remembering and recreating the city around us.
Members of the local community are invited in to contribute stories of gardens – real, past or imagined – in exchange for edible plants grown by the artists. As conversations unfold throughout the exhibition, the artists will produce a series of experimental domestic micro-farms that respond to the places and ideas being discussed. This timely project investigates what it means to live in this city in the context of urban expansion, climate change and food crisis.
Visit Make-do Garden City for a chance to catch the artists tending their installation, or join them for one of two informal workshops involving seed-swapping, drawing, tea and conversation.
Public Programs:
Saturday, 10th April, 11am – 1pm
& Saturday, 8th May, 11am – 1pm (Closing event)
www.4a.com.au
www.makeshift.com.au
Make-do Garden City has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
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