Product description

Cura’s Garden is a hardcover artist book documenting Ben Thorp Brown’s long-term installation in the courtyard of Kunsthal Gent, a former 13th-century Carmelite monastery in Ghent, Belgium.

Developed with Belgian landscape designer Jan Minne, the garden has been unfolding since 2023 through trees, mist, wet earth, ceramic sculpture, sound, and seasonal change. At the center of the project is Cura, the Roman goddess of care, drawn from the ancient myth of the human body formed from clay. Brown brings that story into the garden through works including Fountain (After Cura), a ceramic figure emerging from clay and water, and Memento, a shell-like sculpture carrying the voice of Joan La Barbara.

The book follows the first two years of the garden’s life, organized by season. Photographs by Michiel de Cleene and Ben Thorp Brown capture the installation in changing weather and light: fog moving through branches, ceramic tiles, frost-covered plants, and the courtyard’s shifting surfaces. The volume also includes linocut botanical prints by Cary Thorp Brown, adding another visual layer to the project.

Co-published by Inventory Press, Kunsthal Gent, and Roma Publications, the 152-page hardcover includes essays by Laura McLean-Ferris, Laurie Cluitmans, and Robert Wiesenberger, along with a roundtable conversation with Brown, Laura Herman, Jan Minne, and Valentijn Goethals.

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