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The Garden is Siân Davey's third publication with Trolley Books, following Looking for Alice (2015) and Martha (2018). Signed copies of The Garden are available but they will go quickly! Buy from our bookshop in store or online.
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Interview with photographer Siân Davey talking about her project The Garden
Discover works from Siân Davey’s The Garden in a free outdoor exhibition in the Soho Photography Quarter just outside the Gallery.
Starting in 2020, British photographer Siân Davey transformed her abandoned garden over three summers into a vibrant space, filled with wildflowers, birdsong and people.
Together with her son, Luke, Davey cultivated a space rooted in love. They researched native flowers and encouraged biodiversity, sourcing seeds and plants locally.
When the flowers bloomed, they called in the community. Everyone had a place in The Garden; the mothers and daughters, the lonely, the marginalised, lovers, the traumatised and heartbroken and those that had concealed a lifetime of shame. The space became an expression of yearning, defiance, joy and interconnectedness.
Everyone has a place in our garden. I am the garden. Those who enter are the garden. Without distinction, without separation.
- Siân Davey
When you visit, watch the film (2023, by Dylan Friese-Greene and Siân Davey) playing every day from dusk on the wall opposite the photographs.
Watch a timelapse of the installation of Siân Davey’s The Garden in Soho Photography Quarter, just outside the Gallery
Biography
Siân Davey (b. 1964, Brighton) worked as a psychotherapist for 15 years before launching her career in photography in 2014. She draws on her experience in psychotherapy and as a mother to inform her practice. Her work is in a range of national and international collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, and The French National Collection, Paris. She lives and works in Dartington, Devon.
