MATTEO/GARDINER

Matteo Gardiner tends a vegetable garden and a garden on the archaeological lands surrounding the city of Tivoli. His field is located along the river and its irrigation channels, in an area transitioning between rural signs and urban traces.

At the foot of Villa d’Este and next to the Temple of Hercules Victor, he cultivates botanical and bulbous roses among ancient and modern ruins, grapes and vegetables in traditional pergolas, olive trees along the waterways and transhumance paths, and bees among fruit and citrus trees.

In these places and within the landscape, Gardiner seeks the memory of gestures and agricultural paths, collects worn-out and discarded objects, and looks for invasive signs as a form of contemporary desertion from common expectations.

His residency at IUNO is long-term and guided by the calendar of sowing and harvesting. When he can leave his roses and garden, he comes to IUNO, where he studies and is developing our library dedicated to the wild.