EXHIBITION: GIARDINO EDEN

This body of work explores the Eden Garden, an English country garden, incongruously secreted on the island of Giudecca, Venice. Frederic Eden created it in 1884, and it was visited by Walter Sickert, Henry James and Marcel Proust. But it’s owner from 1979-2000, Austrian architect and artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser believed that nature should be left to do as it pleased, so he allowed the flowering plants to die and let nature take over. Since his death, the garden has been strictly closed to the public and is cared for with minimal intervention.

This series of acrylic on linen paintings is created from archival materials that are the only record of this mysterious Eden. These works bring together the pondlife, plants and flowers featured in the original design of the garden, such as magnolias and pomegranates, roses and goldfish, as well as an imagined vision of the wild profusion now hidden between the garden’s high walls. The work recreates that which is now lost to time and locked behind a gate. The work allows viewers to experience the past of the site with elements of its present reality, as well as depicting and celebrating the historical ornate features of the garden itself.

Jessica Holmes lives and works in London. She studied at Wimbledon School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools and has exhibited extensively in the UK, as well as the USA, South Korea, France and Greece.
Holmes’ work is set at a point in space where past and present can be experienced simultaneously, deepening and reifying the sense of a place. This is often a dilapidated building or garden, or one that has disappeared completely, and has to be rediscovered using archival collections and historical remnants. Her practice is a merging of archival materials and historical sites, using elements of these to focus on artefacts and places, questioning memory and interpretation. These archival holdings are props; a catalyst for creating a narrative, the point of which is to consider a place at the moments when it connected tightly to human consciousness, and in its past and future of dilapidation and decay. jessicaholmes.co.uk

Location: The Art Space, Cass Art Hampstead

Dates: Sunday 26th October – Saturday 8th November 2025

Admission: FREE

Please note, this exhibition has no step-free access.