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The MIRIAD Team

John Hyatt is a polymath artist, musician, published novelist, and Professor/ Director of MIRIAD (the Manchester Institute for Research and Development in Art and Design) at Manchester Metropolitan University. He designed the tilted windmills in Manchester's Exchange Square and for this garden has been Project Director and designer, produced the concepts, research proposal and narratives and John was the creator of the figurative sculptural pieces and the painting on the canopy.

Ed Bennis is a landscape architect (BLA University of Georgia, USA) and holds an MA in Conservation Studies (University of York). He works within MIRIAD and he has worked for English Heritage, several County Councils and private clients in terms of historic landscapes. He has taught and practiced in the UK for over thirty years; lectured in numerous countries, presented papers, co-authored books, and published in professional journals. He runs landscape Master Classes in Novi Sad, Serbia where he is Visiting Professor of Landscape Architecture, and in Beijing and Guangzhou, China (2007). For this garden, he has been the designer and responsible for planting and on-site construction management.

Tongyu Zhou is an artist from Beijing, now working as a researcher at MIRIAD, where she completed her PhD. Together, with Hyatt, she has curated three large exhibitions of Manchester artists in China in 2007 (Beijing, Xiamen and Guangzhou) and two solo artist shows there of work by MMU artists, Keith Brown and Helen Felcey. The shows attracted over 50,000 visitors and were described by the British Council as the most effective presentation of British art and design education they had ever seen in southern China. Dr. Zhou has also researched and curated an exhibition of contemporary Chinese printmaking (Manchester and Durham). Tongyu is practicing in fine arts, such as printmaking, calligraphy, photography and other digital media. For this garden, she has worked on narratives and been researcher and designer.

Erica Wright is a Cheshire artist whose pieces have been seen on just about every continent of the world, including the large MIRIAD exhibitions of 2007 in China, yet her deep roots in the county where she was born and bred give her work a special connection to the Cheshire landscape that she loves so deeply. Making art in a variety of media, from stone sculpture to art ceramics, to painting on canvas and digital artworks in her Apple Macintosh computer, Erica seeks to find ways to make meaningful art that inspires people to ask questions about art, life and spirituality. She gained her PhD in Art History at MIRIAD in 2006, and has developed ideas and discoveries highlighted in her doctoral thesis into the set of environmental artworks being showcased in the garden. Erica is also a musician and has worked closely with John Hyatt on the art and design concepts for the garden.

Rachel Davies has been our invaluable administrative support throughout and has organised our event volunteers, who we also thank for their generous gifts of their time, good will and enthusiasm.

Royal Horticultural Society

2008 RHS Flower Show Tatton
23 - 27 July 2008
Tatton Park, near Knutsford, Cheshire
Site: C69