I Will Meet You in the Garden Jess Dare

I Will Meet You in the Garden evolves from earlier exhibitions A Handful of  Flowers… Funaki Gallery, Melbourne, 2023 and More Than a Handful of Flowers, The National Gallery Ōtautahi, Christchurch. Artist Jess Dare lives and works in Adelaide, Australia, on the traditional lands of the Kaurna people and has a deep connection to her garden: "I come from a long line of gardeners. As a child, our garden was a place of wonder and play: a sprawling vegetable patch scented with mint, abundant apricot, peach and nectarine trees. It fed us, entertained us and became my sanctuary. As an adult,  my own garden has grown into a memory palace where plants hold stories, people and moments in time. I tend to them, water them and keep them alive, much like the  memories they carry." 

This understanding of the garden as both a physical place and a living archive sits at the heart of the exhibition. For Dare, motherhood has deepened this connection, revealing how gestures of care are quietly passed between generations. A child gathering posies, tending herbs or picking vegetables becomes a bridge across time, where inherited knowledge resurfaces through ordinary acts of play and nurture. 

Created in collaboration with photographer Bri Hammond, two photographic works  connect ninety years between Dare's grandmother and daughter. Each holds a handful of flowers gathered from their own gardens, their hands becoming quiet portraits of care, labour and continuity. Together with a series of sculptural objects and jewellery arranged like family keepsakes upon a mantlepiece, the works in the Wonder Boxes invite reflection on the fragments of life we preserve and the stories that endure through material things. 

The exhibition's title, I Will Meet You in the Garden, is both an invitation and a promise. For Dare, the garden is a place where generations continue to meet— where memory is cultivated through repeated acts of care and where the cycles of  growth, decay and renewal mirror the rhythms of family life. Flowers are enduring symbols of love, resilience and belonging, reminding us that what is lovingly tended  continues to flourish across generations.

Image: Jess Dare, Sweet Reminder, 2023, photography by Grant Hancock.