Public gardens should remain open at night, unlit. (In a few cases, a steady dim illumination might be justified on psycho-geographical grounds.) ¹
- Lettrist International, ‘Proposals for Rationally Improving the City of Paris’, 1955
Amidst trees, gates and sun-faded fences, Dominic Myatt invites us into a surrealist garden-like landscape. Referencing front lawns and communal green spaces in cities, Myatt’s first solo exhibition Don’t Kiss by The Garden Gate, Love is Blind but the Neighbours Ain’t reflects the artist’s interest in theatre sets and their ability to whisk you away to a completely different location. Influenced by the stages of old-school Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals and the whimsical backdrops of Looney Tunes cartoons, Myatt explores spaces where everything is seemingly curious and joyous, yet bound by limitations. Within these confines, anything can happen, such as extreme violence in animations and absurdly idealistic scenarios in musicals.
These kinds of landscapes often lead to emotional disorientation when first encountered and can remind us of the dérive, a term developed by members of the cultural collective Lettrist International in the 50s and publicly theorised by the philosopher Guy Debord. Debord defines it as ‘a mode of experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences.’² The dérive is closely connected to psychogeography, the exploration of cities that emphasises interpersonal connections to arbitrary places and routes. Beyond this definition lies the desire to introduce poetry to a lived experience of the metropolis. Perhaps, as Vincent Kaufmann suggests in his essay ‘The Poetics of the Dérive’, the Lettrists cultivated their own secret gardens with labyrinths in which they could disappear, and when they couldn’t build them, they tried to turn the city itself into a garden maze.³
In Dominic Myatt’s garden labyrinth, we let ourselves be drawn to varied encounters as we drift through the exhibition space: a plastic piece depicting the silhouette of a metal gate, marked by the passage of time like a cyanotype, recording the sun's movement from day to day; and small black bags hanging from the branches, which we might assume are filled with dog faeces, referring to the almost paradoxical behaviour of dog owners picking up their dogs' waste only to then tie the bag to a tree as a form of civic duty. As you walk, you see a larger bag lying on the ground and goat horns protruding from it - is it a body bag, or maybe just another bin bag? In fact, it refers to the artist’s childhood pet goat, which had to be put down by vets and was taken away in an animal body bag similar to the one we see. In the bathroom upstairs a cartoon horse stares at you, panting and salivating, nostrils flaring, as you wonder what it’s thinking - is it thirsty / angry / lusty? You decide.
As the Lettrists believed, the reality of space depends on the subject’s ability to perceive it. The exhibition invites you to experience your own garden, drawn or deterred by the encounters Myatt created.
Words by Victoria Gyuleva
¹ Internationale Lettriste, ‘Projet d’embellissements rationnels de la ville de Paris’, Potlatch, no. 23 (Paris, 13 October 1955); translated by Ken Knabb, in Situationist International Anthology (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2002).
² Guy Debord, ‘Definitions’, Internationale Situationniste (June 1958); translated by Ken Knabb.
³ Vincent Kaufmann, ‘The Poetics of the Dérive’ (2001) in Documents of Contemporary Art. The Everyday (Whitechapel Gallery and the MIT Press, 2008).
Dominic Myatt (1993, Leicester) is an artist living and working in London. Their practice moves between drawing, painting, sculpture and photography - often playing with humour and anxiety whilst incorporating references to autobiography, sexuality and the everyday.
He graduated from Goldsmiths in 2014 and The Royal Drawing School in 2019.
His work is held in the Tate Collection, The Royal Collection and the Soho House Art Collection.
Special thanks to:
Gavin Friday, score of ‘Hoarse’
Gavin Friday is an Irish singer and songwriter, composer, actor and painter, best known as a founding member of the post-punk group The Virgin Prunes.
Nominations: Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song (2004, 1994)
