Now when most people think of allotments, they probably think of elderly men in flat caps, a bit like Peter Tinniswood’s ‘Uncle Mort’ sitting in sheds and cultivating the land by knocking their pipes out on it.
Yet allotments nowadays are home to a whole range of creative people, and there is a strong influence of women in modern allotment gardening, evidenced by the number of women artists in this exhibition.”
Yet sitting in the gallery I’m surrounded by images of old men in flat caps, in paintings, in drawings, in the photographs and in the videos. Given that, can we legitimately ask the question: Are there too many old men in flat caps?
Ok, so one portrait is of the artist’s grandfather, and older faces often offer more character, the evidence of a life lived, but the only female face is “Pam” in Kevin’s photographs. (Ok, I’ve forgotten the all-female line-up in Margaret’s committee photo, but give me a little poetic licence please!)
I know (being one myself) that old men have to have somewhere to go, otherwise they just clutter-up their homes and drive their wives mad (another cliché), so the array of ‘man caves’ on display serve a useful purpose. (Is there a female equivalent of a ‘man cave’? A ‘she den’, which would abbreviate to a shed wouldn’t it?)
I know that Margaret and the others would argue (very convincingly) that their work shows a distinctively female gaze on allotments, but (as Ros’ piece in “the back of the seed packet” sets out) there are women on plots and children come on a lot more now, do the images in the exhibition reflect that? And does the question matter?
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