Photographer. Marc Quinn was born in London and studied art and art history at Cambridge University. After graduating he worked for a time as assistant to Barry Flanagan. One of Quinn’s better known works, Self (1991), was a frozen cast of his own head made from his own blood. Much of his work has been concerned with preserving the living form and presenting it as art. Initially these were relatively simple frozen forms. Through a process of trial error he found that silicone, the viscous type used in cosmetic surgery and kept at –20^oc, was the ideal preservative.

Garden² came from a commission in May 2000 from the Prada Foundation in Milan which enabled the artist to create a frozen garden. Housed in a tank measuring nearly 7 metres long by 2.5 metres wide and high and using 25 tons of silicone liquid, the artist fashioned a garden of approximately 1000 flowers from all corners of the world. These include plumbago and banana trees, cacti, tulips, roses, desert orchids, tropical fruits and exotic vegetables. None of the pairings of the plants could happen in nature, only in this captive frozen garden whose colour and beauty was almost frightening as it seemed to allude to gene technology and the manipulation of nature. The artist lives and works in London.

Before completing the Prada commission Quinn had decided to make a series of prints based on this project, both as an art work and as documentation. He shot a single roll of 35 mm film and selected eight images for the portfolio. These were scanned and printed using a digital ink-jet printer and permanent pigments. The pigments effectively freeze the colour of the flowers for a second time, hence the title Garden² . The prints were sealed with several layers of gloss varnish to allude to walls of the tank of the original garden.

Garden² 2000
Pigment prints
80.6 x 124.5 cm
22/45
Purchased from Paragon Press