Early Spring: A Garden of Small Gestures – A Contemporary Art and Botanical Exhibition at Prague Castle

This exhibition connects the first blooms of spring with the work of contemporary young artists, drawing inspiration from Derek Jarman's book 'Modern Nature'. It explores how a garden can serve as a portrait, ritual, or refuge, highlighting resilience and adaptation.

Connecting the first glimpses of spring, the blossoming buds of colorful tulips, hippeastrums, daffodils, and other flowers with the work of contemporary young artists, the exhibition 'Early Spring: A Garden of Small Gestures' draws inspiration from 'Modern Nature', a book by the British filmmaker and artist Derek Jarman (1942–1994). Jarman's peculiar garden at Prospect Cottage, created despite inhospitable conditions, remains his artistic statement: resolutely unconventional, wild, resilient, and strange. The book contains diary entries from his terminal days, merging the diary of the garden and its caretaker into a single narrative. The selected works of contemporary art respond to Jarman’s text, showing that a garden can serve as a portrait, a ritual, or a refuge—an open-ended activity requiring perseverance, tolerance for lack of control, and adaptability. The exhibition also features a flower showcase in the Empire-style Greenhouse, where Prague Castle gardeners meticulously plan and cultivate a vibrant display. Visitors can look forward to twenty-nine varieties of tulips, six hyacinths, fifty-seven small and early bulbs, twenty-four daffodils, and ten hippeastrums, all blooming for the exhibition.

Admission to the exhibition is 50 CZK for adults and free for children up to 6 years old. The Empire-style Greenhouse is unfortunately not wheelchair accessible.