All images Courtesy by the artist. Photo: António Jorge Silva
This interest in gardens emerged from a more general idea of landscape as a possible means of rigorous reconstruction of the visible field through an experiential dimension.
(…)
The practice of drawing is rooted in her artistic training, growing more sophisticated over time until becoming an important tool for understanding garden design itself as spatial, architectural, didactic or illustrative structures, sometimes intersecting with the methodologies of scientific drawing as the revelatory language of structures of classification and inventory.
(…)
The activity of gathering (or collecting) is structural in the sense of constructing a worldview. (…)
The mycelial web is Gabriela Albergaria’s most recent interest, a result also of her perennial walking and watching. Her motivation is the uncovering of a field of connections that is closely linked to life, in which transformation, fermentation and decadence are synonymous with renewal. Her wandering walks through parks and gardens from the Redwoods of California to Trianon Park in São Paulo, the Botanical Garden in Lisbon and Wave Hill Garden in New York have followed a flow of references that make these parks and gardens – the sites of her interventions in North and South America and Europe – into moments of a common journey with two fundamental themes: the representation of Nature, and the historical, political and biological connectivity of the world. And perhaps along the way she will also find a mushroom, a piece of wood or a leaf to take for safekeeping.
(…)
Landscape in Repair #3 2019
Watercolour, colour pencil, wax crayons, oil pastel and pitt charcoal on Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315 gsm paper
137 × 219,5 cm
Landscape in Repair #6 2020
Watercolour, Indian ink, colour pencil, wax crayons, dry and oil pastels on Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315 gsm paper
137 × 178,5 cm
Landscape in Repair #1 2019
Colour pencil on Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315 gsm paper
206 × 303 cm
Couche Sourde
2010/2020
Pressed soil, branches and leaves
120×984×140cm
Couche sourde is a technique for growing plants and developing seeds in non-endemic places. The humus and heat it produces create ideal conditions for seeds from the New World to germinate in Europe, paving the way for the colonisation of plants from around the world. What inter- ested me was how this cultivation technique completely transformed the landscape of the world. I discovered drawings documenting this ancient technique and decided to use them as a model for an earth sculp- ture. The piece itself is made of rammed earth, another ancient technique used in the construction of houses in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, in Africa and in South America.
Couche Sourde
2010/2020
Pressed soil, branches and leaves
120×984×140cm
Árvore
2004/2020
Tree
Australian Acacia branches, collected in the Lisbon region, cut and reassembled with a new morphology adapted to the site and hardware, variable dimensions A dead tree is cut down and later reassem- bled with a new morphology that places it in rela- tion with the surrounding space – as if it were a drawing in space. In the construction of the piece I refer to the grafting technique used to improve species of fruit trees and other plants, seeking here to explore the issue of the colonisation of plants.
Gabriela Albergaria
Árvore
2004/2020
Tree (detail)
Sem título 2019 [Untitled]
Colour pencil on paper, hardware and tree branch
45,5 × 35,5 × 21,5 cm
Repair/Recover 2010-2020
Wood sticks and sulphur-free modelling clay
210 × 156 × 4,5 cm
Over 10 years, I collected wood in different states of preservation in various locations around the world. In the studio I proceeded to repair each of these fragments with organic materials that would accompany the deterioration process of the wood itself.
Repair/Recover 2010-2020 (detail)
Wood sticks and sulphur-free modelling clay
210 × 156 × 4,5 cm
