Laura Cresser, MFA

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Graduated from Newcastle University

Selected by Ben Jones

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon Project (installation view), 2009

Laura Cresser's exhibition The Hanging Gardens Project consists of four scale models of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, based on differing descriptions by ancient Greek and Babylonian writers and historians. Each model is displayed on a low plinth, resulting in the observer towering over them and having to crouch down in order to observe any detail.

On first sight they give an aura of truth due to the nature of architectural models and the deliberate visibility of their construction. This is intensified by the height of the plinths, which offer the viewer a feeling of ownership and power over each model. Under further investigation, however, the viewer begins to realise that these constructs are based on an uncertainty, and as Cresser herself puts it, a 'suspension of belief'.

The belief in this Utopian ideal can result in the projection of our desires onto what essentially is a fictional construct for which there is no real evidence. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon exist only in text and in our subconscious. By creating these scale models Cresser isn’t attempting to turn the gardens into a reality but to investigate how these descriptions have become the truth of what potentially is just a story.

Cresser's previous work delves into the cabinet of curiosity, through botanical paintings and drawing of fictional and hybrid birds, museum cabinets full of unnatural surreal objects and Švankmajer like animations consisting of eggs coming to life. Here she takes a different angle, acting more like an archaeologist than a biologist, but with a similar vision, to investigate our willingness to believe more or less anything that is put in front of us and presented as fact. (Ben Jones, 2009)