Silke Otto-Knapp, Golden Garden series

The artist’s research began with the work of landscape gardener Humphry Repton (1752 – 1818), who worked extensively in Bristol and the surrounding region. Repton’s concept of the garden was an idealised version of ‘natural landscape’ through which one might ‘shut out the city’. Silke Otto-Knapp uses her layers and washes to weave together different levels of image and reality. She plays with an image’s capacity to confirm or destabilize our sense of place. The ephemeral quality of her paintings suggests that the scenes depicted may not be entirely as they seem.