"Christopher Köller's photographs don't strive for the 'ideal' view, but for a view that is different, unexpectedly beautiful or jarring. The blurred edges of plants and buildings bleed into one another and generate a sense of restless movement, a feeling that we can't quite focus on any one point - as though we were moving though the landscape of a dream. Produced between 1997 and 2009, the scope of Parádeisos is vast, taking us from Zen Gardens in Kyoto to a roadside in West Hollywood, from Marie Antoinette's simulations of peasant life in Versailles to the grounds of the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne. The diversity of locations portrayed reflects both Köller's insatiable curiosity for travel and also the nomadic lifestyle of many contemporary artists. Residencies in Italy, Japan, Spain and the USA have allowed the expansion of the Parádeisos series and have also helped to define Köller's artistic practice more broadly. Gardens always embody a tension between order and predictability as planned designs are subject to the random workings of the natural world. Christopher Köller's choice of equipment - a cheap plastic camera - doubles this. The photographer's control of the photograph is in constant play with the unpredictable effects of the camera and its distortions. Köller delights in the camera's 'mistakes': its limited focus, unexpected bursts of colour, and tendency to reveal artefacts of the negative. In Parádeisos, these camera-effects blend with the gardens, and with the tension and play that we find in the combination of careful organisation with unruly nature."

Christopher Koller: Paradeisos

Arts & Photography

Grant, Katrina

Individual Artists

T & G Pub Pty Ltd

Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture argues that theatre, and the new genre of opera in particular, played a key role in creating a new vision of landscape during the long seventeenth century in Italy. It explores how the idea of gardens as theatres emerged at the same time as opera was developed in Italian courts around the turn of the seventeenth century. During this period landscape painting emerged as a genre and the aesthetic of designed landscapes and gardens was wholly transformed, which resulted in a reconceptualization of the relationship between humans and landscape. The importance of theatre as a key cultural expression in Italy is widely recognised, but the visual culture of theatre and its relationship to the broader artistic culture is still being untangled. This book argues that the combination of narratives playing out in natural settings (Arcadia, Parnassus, Alcina), the emotional responses elicited by sets and special effects (the apparent magical manipulation of the laws of nature), and, the way that garden theatres were used for displays of power and to enact princely virtue and social order, all contributed to this shifting idea of landscape in the seventeenth century.

Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture (Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700)

History & Criticism

Amsterdam University Press

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Books by Grant, Katrina