Demeter’s Garden
When Hades chanced upon Persephone gathering flowers, he was so taken by her beauty that he promptly abducted her to the Underworld in order to make her his Queen. Demeter, goddess of corn, was so distraught at her daughter’s disappearance that she abandoned her deific responsibilities to search for Persephone, leaving the harvest to wither and the land to become barren. Demeter’s distress was so heartrending that eventually Zeus was moved to intervene and consented to Persephone’s return to the surface for six months of the year. Thus the seasons were born.
Demeter is a fitting muse for Lauren Berkowitz’s most recent floor installation at Heide II. The culmination of a two-year project at Templestowe’s Museum of Modern Art, Demeter’s Garden comprises fallen or spent plant matter, gathered by the artist from the museum’s grounds while she was working on a concurrent piece, Karakarook’s Garden. The resulting work is an exquisite tapestry of interwoven spices, petals, seedpods, grasses, leaves and fronds contained within a hardwood frame. The arrangement of native, indigenous and exotic plants, with their various hues, forms and textures, speaks not only of seasonal changes but also those caused by human agency, illustrated in a botanical heritage that traverses pre-colonial natives through colonial and post war exotics, to reinstated indigenous specimens.
Given the brittle nature of most spent plant matter, there is a remarkable softness to Demeter’s Garden and the tapestry analogy applies as much to the tactile illusions of the work as it does to the metaphorical allusions. Wattles, smoke bush, feathery kangaroo grasses, bridal wreath and golden rod appear soft as mohair, while bottlebrushes, Indian horse chestnuts and dawn redwood leaves evoke hand-looped carpets and