Le Jardin

The installation “Le Jardin” 05 is a 12 screen film and digital sound installation funded by the Arts Council of England through a Gallery Sketch commissioning scheme that included work by Tracy Emin and Isaac Julien.

The moving image installation Le Jardin explores the idea of personal and public space through the Philosophy / Politics of the East and West, around the concept of the garden, through different cinematic means of representation.

“For many, artists choice of medium is no longer a politically loaded decision, Le Jardin obliges us to reconsider these conclusions. By using her medium to probe behind the idea of the garden Keane reveals how even the simplest of subjects is culturally mediated” Belinda Bowring, Frieze Oct. 05

The Japanese distilled a form of gardening that reflected (and defined) their culture, but also derived from a history of colonial dispossession. “…how to reconstitute political agency and subjectivity from a position of cultural subordination and what role, if any, does art play in this process?” Prof. Jean Fisher. Middlesex University Professorial Lectures 07. In 1871 a Japanese law declared large numbers of Temple and Daimyo gardens from Momoyama and Edo times to be public parks and sent artists and designers to study parks and gardens in Europe. The end result was a mixture of traditional Japanese and European concepts - a two way process as is evident in the garden and paintings of Monet.

My work, Le Jardin becomes a signifier for the past and present through the language of film: light, shadow, colour, shape and form. The diorama of multi-projections enhances and relocates our perception of the cinematic, articulating and embracing the subjective of transition, creating for the audience the illusion of moving through a global garden but seen as a cultural structure.