We are Heidi Gardner and Peter Gardner, a husband-and-wife artist duo, working under the name Gardner & Gardner.
Coming from different disciplines – Heidi from History of Art, Peter from Theology – we have built up our contemporary art practice over two decades and now work out of a studio in Glasgow, while combining this with Peter’s position as the ordained Church of Scotland minister to the visual arts communities of Glasgow.
We make temporary, site-specific installations and interventions, often set within the context of worshipping communities and their buildings, introducing a conceptual element into the sacred architecture. Our work responds to these environments, interacting with light, structure, scale and surface.
Using everyday objects and materials, many recycled, we reconfigure and transform them, in order to reveal their latent value and beauty. Nothing is too mundane, everything can be repurposed, it’s a form of redemption, of hallowing, of loving, a hint that everything and everyone can be made new.
Our work is created through a long process of consideration, distillation and paring back, involving elements of contemplation, observation and repetition of action. We are committed to listening as an artistic discipline and regard invigilating our own work as an integral part of the creative process.
At the core of our work lies a shared vision and aesthetic, which is realised with care and precision in the way the work is made, resulting in a stillness and a simplicity of form.