Photography call for Picturesque Gardens exhibition

Waikato Museum is putting out a call for keen photographers, amateur or professional, to provide themed images for display with a new Picturesque Gardens exhibition which opens at the museum in Hamilton on Saturday (28 September).

The exhibition is dedicated to showing the development of the Picturesque Garden Movement which was fashionable from the late 1700s.

It’s a style of garden design which will be recreated at Hamilton Gardens with the opening of the new Picturesque Garden as part of its Fantasy Garden collection in November.

“Many of the eighteenth-century gardens included features that referred to a fantasy story or classical legend,” says Hamilton Gardens Director, Dr Peter Sergel. “So we’ve used the story of Mozart’s opera ‘The Magic Flute’ as our design theme since it was written at the time these Picturesque Gardens were being made, and is rich with fantastical characters and Masonic symbols typical of those gardens.”

Museum Director Cherie Meecham says: “Adopting a kiwi can-do attitude, early European immigrants to New Zealand brought the concept of picturesque gardens with them to transplant onto our soils.”

“They may not be easy to find, but we’re now looking for photographic images from around the Waikato of contemporary outdoor scenes that follow the eighteenth-century rules of the picturesque – and we have a screen in the exhibition that’s just waiting to show off local photographers’ skills.”

Photos should be emailed to Waikato Museum (museum@hcc.govt.nz) by Friday 18 October to be considered for the exhibition. Images should be black and white and follow guidelines laid out on the Museum’s website on the page dedicated to the Picturesque Gardens exhibition.

To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the Museum also invites visitors to have fun designing their own garden at craft tables laid out from 11am-3pm on the first day of the exhibition only.

Details of the Picturesque Gardens exhibition and the photography call are available on the Waikato Museum website www.waikatomuseum.co.nz .

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