Avant-Gardeners: Contemporary Artists and Their Gardens

For thousands of years, gardens have inspired artists; today, a new generation embraces them as a creative medium in their own right. Bringing together more than thirty contemporary practitioners, this sumptuous volume presents gardens, landscapes, and living installations that challenge conventional understandings of both artistic practice and the natural world. Moving far beyond the familiar trope of the painter’s garden, these works engage with ecology, memory, technology, community, cultural history, and humanity’s evolving relationship with the living world. Readers will encounter an extraordinary range of projects, from exuberant meadows and experimental landscapes to community-led initiatives and immersive environments. Featuring artists from around the globe—including Precious Okoyomon, Olafur Eliasson, Tattfoo Tan, Maria Thereza Alves, and Cecilia Vicuña—the book traces one of the most innovative developments in contemporary art while revealing how gardens have become sites of ecological imagination, social engagement, and creative experimentation. Enhanced by more than 150 colour illustrations, foil-stamped and debossed cover, and beautifully printed endpapers, it celebrates the extraordinary ways contemporary art continues to redefine what a garden can be—and what art can achieve.