Hay-Hay

Submission to Jardins de Metis international garden festival competition.

Year: 2018

Team: Anca Matyiku + Chad Connery

Hay-Hay borrows from traditional agricultural elements, to orchestrate a curious assemblage of hay-stack bodies that are at once familiar and strange; recognizable and unknowable.

On a sun-drenched garden plot, this cryptic row of giants loom large over the dancing grass grazing at their feet. Amidst the garden of imposing figures, unruly borders of timothy and oat grass, reminiscent of hay fields, provide soft enclosure with no finite terminations and borrow the surrounding landscape. Near the entry, two recycled tractor tires are splayed open to the sky collect rainwater; both reflecting pool and sun tanned hide. The garden’s enigmatic menagerie greets adults and children alike with a visceral mix of strangeness and familiarity, combining the smell of the warm hay, the rustle of tall grasses, and a playfully flirtatious predisposition to welcome and envelop its human guests.