Name: Peter Dayton: Dark Garden
Start: 2024-07-01T00:00:00
Location: Guild Hall

Peter Dayton

Guild Hall

After a nearly decade-long career as a punk rock musician, Peter Dayton returned to visual art upon moving to East Hampton in the mid-1980s. Dark Garden is a site-specific installation created for Guild Hall’s stairwell leading from the lobby to the balcony of the Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan Theater. Dayton’s exploration of flowers began when he found discarded issues of House and Garden magazine from the 1950s near his home, and his collages utilize photocopied flowers from seed catalogs, which links his practice to the work of Andy Warhol and other pop artists. He chooses visually arresting images of flowers without leaves and stems—images devoid of sentiment, emotion, or specific references—allowing the flower forms to create their own patterns.