EARLY SPRING: A GARDEN OF SMALL GESTURES

26. 2. – 8. 3. 2026

The Empire-style Greenhouse in the Royal Garden

Exhibition curator Vít Novák

Artists: Iva Davidová, Efemér, Jakub Hájek & František Hanousek, Jakub Hons, Eva Jaroňová, Adrián Kriška, Kristina Láníková, Barbora Lungová, Michael Nosek, Antonie Stanová, Jaro Varga

foto: Michał Patycki

For the third year running, the Empire-style Greenhouse in the Royal Garden of Prague. Castle serves as a venue for flowers to meet contemporary art as part of the traditional spring exhibition – not to compete but to creatively complement one another. This time, we turn to British director and artist Derek Jarman (1942–1994) to link the botanical display to the visual art. Some may

know him as the filmmaker behind Sebastiane, Caravaggio, and Edward II; others as

a prominent human rights activist supporting the queer community. Yet Jarman was also a gardener. In 1986, he bought an old fisherman’s hut on the beach in Dungeness, within sight of the eponymous nuclear power station. He named the house Prospect Cottage and surrounded it with a peculiar garden – a far cry from the traditional British pattern of perennial beds, neat lawns, and heritage rose varieties. The high-salinity shingle beach and exposure to strong winds inspired the artist to rethink both the conventional form and the meaning of a garden. Jarman interspersed hardy plants with pebble patterns and sculptures made from driftwood or found metal objects. As he planted the first flowers, he also began to keep a diary, later published as Modern Nature. In this book, the story of the garden intertwines with the personal testimony fighting to overcome or circumvent these conditions, Jarman sought creative ways to build on them. The parallel with his films and his activist stance during Thatcherism – an era notoriously hostile to independent culture and minorities – is no coincidence. The exhibition’s title paraphrases the term. Jarman used for his experimental Super-8 films: Cinema of Small Gestures. In contrast – and alongside the diligently orchestrated display of spring flowers, of its creator. Jarman bought the cottage at a time when he already knew he would eventually die from AIDS-related complications. The text moves freely from listing the flowers he planted and noting their historical or ritual meanings to recalling personal memories and reflecting on life and art more broadly. An avid gardener since childhood,Jarman found solace in this practice during the final stage of his life. The contemporary artists selected for the exhibition A Garden of Small Gestures share much in common with Derek Jarman. Some of them directly follow up on his ideas, while others engage with them more loosely. For Jarman, gardening and art were intrinsically linked. Indeed, both activities are open-ended practices that require sensitivity, perseverance, and care, while at times calling for radical intervention and the ability to adapt to unexpected developments. The exhibited works convey various facets of the gardener’s text. They suggest that art – as well as a garden – can function as a diary, a ritual, a refuge, a political statement, or a means of accepting one’s own fragility and finding courage to face it. The garden at Dungeness bears witness to the desire to create something beautiful despite the inhospitable conditions and the awareness of imminent death. Rather than strikingly reminiscent of similar shows in the artist’s native England – this exhibition presents yet another dimension of garden care. Drawing on the story of Prospect Cottage, it seeks to show that gardening can extend far beyond its utilitarian, recreational, or ornamental functions. As Derek Jarman himself wrote: “My garden’s boundaries are the horizon.”