Nick Knight: Roses From My Garden Exhibits at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire

Nick Knight exhibition roses in my garden waddesdon manor buckinghamshire uk
Credit: courtesy of the Artist and Albion Barn

British Fashion Photographer, Nick Knight, is exhibiting Roses from my Garden at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire County in England. Knight is the founder and director of SHOWstudio and an honorary professor at University of the Arts, London. His career is marked by longstanding relationships with leading designers like Alexander MxQueen, Yohji Yamamoto, John Galliano, and Gareth Pugh.

His work has been exhibited at such international art institutions as the Tate Modern, Victoria & Albert Museum, Saatchi Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, The Daelim Museum, and many others. He has directed award-winning music videos for Bjork, Lady Gaga, and Kanye West.

nick knight waddesdon manor art exhibition uk
Nick Knight: Roses from my Garden installation. Credit: Sophia Cliffe

Roses From My Garden Installation

“Photographed on an iphone…”

This body of work is inspired by Knight’s fascination with nature in general. More specifically, with the rose as an enduring symbol of beauty. Nick Knight cuts selected roses straight from his garden and arranges them specifically, using only daylight to illuminate his subject.

Photographed on an iPhone, the digital images are then enlarged and filtered through software that uses AI to infill the space between pixels. This calls to the attention the painterly qualities of the blossoms themselves.

What appears at first glance to be a historical approach to flower photography is, upon closer inspection, at the very cutting edge of imaging technology. The resulting images are no longer photographs, but rather, digital representations of photographs.

portrait of artist nick knight
Portrait of Nick Knight. Credit: Britt Lloyd

The works respond beautifully to their surroundings at Waddesdon and its important Victorian garden. The garden is created by four generations of Rothschilds who themselves were passionate about horticulture, and in particular, the rose.

Words From Nick Knight

“I am delighted that Lord Rothschild has invited me to exhibit at Waddesdon,” says Knight. “It is not only one of the country’s finest and most beautiful estates, but with its commitment to canonical and contemporary art it seems the perfect place to show my series ‘Roses from my Garden.’ [This installation] references the rich history of classical painting whilst also looking towards the exciting world of new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence.”

Pippa Shirley, Waddesdon’s Head of Collections & Gardens says, “We are immensely excited to be exhibiting this series of photographs by Nick Knight, which not only capture the intense, dream-like, evanescent beauty of a flower which is found in countless gardens, but also challenge our assumptions of familiarity.”

“They are made using digital technology at the cutting edge,” Shirley adds. “The photographs are made painterly through the way Knight uniquely manipulates the physical media. Their scale is overwhelming. They are not what they appear to be, and so they demand us to look closely, and think about what we are looking at.”

Waddesdon Manor is located about an hour and a half’s drove away from London, and less than a half hour from Oxford.

Nick Knight roses garden painting
Credit: courtesy of the Artist and Albion Barn

Visiting the Exhibition and Hours

The Roses from my Garden installation by Nick Knight is located in the Coach House Gallery at the Stables. It is open Wednesday-Sunday from 11am-5pm.

Admission to Knight’s exhibition is free with all Waddesdon Grounds tickets. Visitors to Waddesdon Manor must pre-book tickets online.

Admission is free for National Trust, Art Fund, RHS members and children under five.

Post-Lockdown Visitor Information

Limits on daily visitor numbers, timed entry slots for arrival, and shuttle buses are in place. Social distancing measures are also in effect to protect the health and safety of everyone at Waddesdon Manor.

Visitors should note the revised walking routes to and from the parking lot, locations of the toilet facilities, and more. 

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Vanessa Gordon
Vanessa Gordon is the Owner and Publisher of East End Taste Magazine. Vanessa is regularly called on as a family travel, personal finance, and Hamptons lifestyle expert. She has been featured in Reader's Digest, Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times, New York Post, The Daily Beast, The Daily News, and many other publications. Vanessa is also the Founder of the annual Hamptons summer event, the Hamptons Interactive Brunch.