Garden Shed Folly

This artwork featured in Picture This (2002). A Meadow Arts commission. 

A major theme in Henderson’s work is in the questioning of the artist’s role in satisfying the audience’s need for spectacle. Her training in interior architecture is apparent in her concerns with architectural spaces and their cultural meanings. Of the Picturesque she writes: “A complex relationship of constructed expectations and learned behaviours was produced between the viewer and the object of viewing pleasure”. Her work sets out to subvert these expectations.

For Picture This, Karen Henderson has produced a ‘Garden Shed Folly’ redesigned to explore the act of framing. Traditionally sited as a focal point in the landscape, the standard prefabricated gardener’s shed reveals two sides glazed with different coloured glass panes while the other two sides remain unchanged. Inside the shed, the coloured glass planes filter and frame the landscape while viewers find themselves on display.

Image: Karen Henderson, Garden Shed Folly, installation view, Picture This, Burford House, 2002. Image courtesy Meadow Arts. 

 

About the artist

Karen Henderson

Karen Henderson exhibited in Picture This, Burford House, 2002, commissioned by Meadow Arts.

Image: Karen Henderson, film, Picture This, Burford House, 2002. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts.