A Gardener at Midnight was conceived while I was an inaugural Creative Fellow at the State Library, Victoria, and was later exhibited at the Library’s Murdoch Gallery. The title references the endless work of the guardians of the Gardens of Babylon. This elephant folio draws on both the invasion of Iraq on the pretense of locating weapons of mass destruction and the bookwork of David Roberts: The Holy Land: Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia (1842-1848). Part of the
stupidity of the invasion – and Desert Storm in general – was that there was the usual accompanying vandalism. Both the National Museum and Library were looted and the library set alight for the delight of the CNN’s cameras. Borrowing the wings of Magic Realism I alight in Baghdad and along with the journalist Robert Fisk rescue A Gardener at Midnight from the ashes. One text is by Brian Castro; I wrote the other. The images are erasures and take their cue from those ancient amphora which, when reassembled are seldom complete, yet the missing pieces, not only deepen the mystery but also offer the imagination a chance to engage and fill in what is not there.