Saatchi Gallery’s 2024 RHS Chelsea Flower Show Garden
21 May – 25 May, Royal Hospital Chelsea
Admission: RHS Chelsea Garden Show ticket requiredAbout
Saatchi Gallery presents its 2024 RHS Chelsea Flower Show garden with British-Caribbean artist Zak Ové.
Titled Abeba Esse, the garden will depict a Black Diasporic journey, from Africa to the Caribbean, and ultimately the UK. Visitors will be led down a path through changing landscapes, encountering Ové’s Invisible Man sculptures along their journey. The African section reflects the idea of ‘Paradise Found’, which Ové describes as, “An autochthonous verdant, jungle scene, where plant life grows untamed in a raw and natural state.” Yet here, visitors will incongruously encounter a rocket ship sculpture, which takes influence from Afrofuturism, and invites the question ‘what is happening here?’
Moving into the Caribbean, visitors will see a change in the native lush flora and fauna of the islands to that of tilled earth with planted crops, typical of slave plantations. The gateway is marked by a change in the path – from the dark soil of the African jungle, to wooden planks that reference the slave ships that carried many through the infamous Middle Passage.
Finally, they will reach a quintessential English garden, featuring the kinds of plants found in stately homes and country houses, indicative of the power and wealth accrued in the UK through slavery. Throughout the garden, botanical labels record the names of historical figures, institutions and corporations who benefited from investments in slavery.
The garden, designed in collaboration with award-winning Garden Designer Dave Green, encourages important conversations about the themes central to Ové’s work – the African Diaspora, contemporary multiculturalism, globalisation, and the blend of politics, tradition, race, and history that informs our identities. Ové stresses that revealing and heralding the histories and skills of those that were rendered invisible is an important part of writing an inclusive history. He comments, “History can and should be accessed in different ways, so as to engage a variety of audiences, and educate and inform through unexpected mediums such as a flower garden.”
Click here to book tickets to RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
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