IN THE GALLERY: EDEN’S GARDEN

Jackson Farley

24 Jul - 22 Aug 2026

EDEN’S GARDEN reimagines contemporary Australia as a fenced dystopian paradise. Through monumental jacquard tapestries, video and installation, Jackson Farley explores nationalism, ownership and belonging through the absurd symbols and myths that continue to shape Australian identity.

Playing with the absurdities of the mythologies that continue to shape Australian identity, EDEN’S GARDEN imagines contemporary Australia as a reclaimed dystopian paradise. Drawing on the biblical story of Genesis, the exhibition considers what happens when the promise of Eden is rewritten as ownership – when utopia becomes fenced, securitised, and returned to the centre as inherited right.

Nationalism, ownership, and belonging sit at the heart of the exhibition. In a moment marked by resurging populism and cultural retrenchment, EDEN’S GARDEN considers what happens when national identity is reshaped as inheritance – something possessed, defended, and nostalgically recovered. Paradise is no longer something lost; it is something claimed. The language of belonging hardens. Borders reappear. Cultural myths are revived and polished for contemporary use.

The landscapes anchoring the works are not Australian bush scenes but hallucinated sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries – European visions of abundance transplanted onto a place that was never empty. Rather than claiming land, the exhibition leans into inherited fantasy. Australian iconography enters through culture rather than terrain: red-brick suburbia, “big things,” consumer residue, fragments of Margaret Olley still-lifes. If the land cannot be spoken for, its symbols can be rehearsed. Culture becomes surface language.

Humour and irony thread through the work, but the laughter is tight. Caution tape slices through pastoral abundance. A Monumental tyre monster appears both heroic and hollow. Burning Holden Monaros sit inside decorative forests. A companion video work interrogates the fanfare surrounding the rise of populist movements, examining how cultural symbols, collective nostalgia, and simplified narratives are mobilised to generate mass appeal. Here, identity becomes something staged and consumed – a spectacle sustained through repetition, sentiment, and desire.

EDEN’S GARDEN does not mourn paradise. It stages its persistence. The garden is slowly collapsing, and the soil is tired. The fence is still up, even as it begins to sag. The myth continues to operate because it is wanted.

The question is not whether Eden exists. The question is who it belongs to – and who is asked to stay outside.

Please email info@thisisnofantasy.com for an exhibition preview