Tom Oliver: "A garden for the gardenless"

In this interview, we speak to Tom Oliver that creates work within the 4D department of Fine Art.

What is the title of your work?

"A garden for the gardenless".

Summarise the work in 5 words

I stole your instagram photos.

Talk us through the process of creating your work

This piece explores the conversion of Waterlow Park from a private garden to a community space after it was donated to the public by Sir Sydney Waterlow in 1889. This work looks at the public use of the park in 2017, uncovered in the form of photos shared on social media. The social media age adds another level of unrestricted access to the park because anyone can scroll through thousands of public images of other people’s experiences with the park. I like to think that, if he had the chance, Sir Sydney Waterlow would be delighted to see this huge catalogue of images depicting the public experiencing and appreciating his donated space.

This 90 second video contains all 2724 of the public Instagram posts of Waterlow Park which were uploaded in 2017. The first step of my process was to download every Instagram photo ever geotagged at Waterlow Park, this equipped me with a database of over 5000 source images. I then began experimenting with different ways of manipulating these images. The first outcome from this experimental process was a series of 12 images, depicting each month of 2017, this piece, ‘Calendar’, is currently being displayed in the LUX conservatory. Having completed this photographic series, I began looking at possibilities for an accompanying moving image outcome, this developed into the final video piece being exhibited today.

How is the work "site-specific"?

I consider both of my pieces on display today to be both site and time specific. Evidently using source images of the Waterlow Park directly connects the artwork to the location. As for it being a time-specific piece, the images are displayed chronologically to depict the passing of time and the idea of an ordered archive of images.

You can follow Tom Oliver on instagram @tom_oliverr and view his website at https://tomoliver.myportfolio.com