Michael Rakowitz's 'The Waiting Gardens of the North' at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art

Michael Rakowitz's exhibition 'The Waiting Gardens of the North' at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead transforms the gallery into a sensory public space filled with plant beds, herbs, and a Babylonian-style banner made from halal food store trash. The installation invites visitors to sit, read, and engage in communal activities, evoking a dream of public space while mourning its impermanence. The wall text frames 'waiting' in the context of forced migration and asylum, with plants from the Middle East and Ukraine serving as memories of lost homelands. The exhibition is temporary, lasting under a year, after which the plants will be discarded. Rakowitz's show follows a series of Baltic exhibitions that reimagine public space, including Ad Minoliti's 'Biosphere Plush' (2021), Albert Potrony's 'equal play' (2021), Sahej Rahal's 'Mythmachine' (2022), and Larry Achiampong's 'Wayfarer' (2023). The review questions whether such temporary art can have a lasting impact on public space, given the broader societal decline since the late-2000s financial crash. The sensory immediacy of the exhibition—its sights and smells—offers a fleeting vision of a better world, but the gallery will eventually close, leaving everything unchanged.