Estonian-Australian artist Ulvi Haagensen’s installation Practical Follies and Fancies for the Everyday Gardener is currently on display at Ted Mack Civic Park, North Sydney. This unusual exhibition space allows passers-by to view the work at any time of day or night.
At the centre of the work is Agnes-Maria Aednik, one of Ulvi’s imaginary friends and, according to the artist, “a passionate gardener”. Without land of her own, Agnes-Maria practises a light-footed, joyful and transitory kind of gardening, making gardens wherever she can. Ulvi helps her along with seeds, seedlings and perhaps a plant or two.
It is an idea that fits naturally into Ulvi’s broader practice. Working across installation, drawing and performance, she brings ordinary activities such as cleaning and gardening into her art, playing with the line between art and everyday life. Her own description of her practice talks about unsettling rigid divisions and working like a bricoleuse — an inventive maker using whatever happens to be available.
Exhibition details
📅 Until: Sunday, 4 October 2026
📍 Where: Inside/Outside Sculpture Plinth, Ted Mack Civic Park, North Sydney
🌱 Exhibition: Practical Follies and Fancies for the Everyday Gardener
🎟️ Entry: Free
An earlier version of Practical Follies and Fancies for the Everyday Gardener appeared at Tallinn’s Keskturg market in 2025 as part of the 9th Artishok Biennial Siesta. There, the installation occupied market kiosk No. 169 — putting contemporary art among the ordinary comings and goings of a working city market.
Agnes-Maria resurfaced this year in The Portable Garden at FELTspace in Adelaide, where Ulvi described the pair as practising “transitory light-footed gardening”, equipped with seeds, seedlings, tools — and curiosity. Now their gardening experiments have found their way to Sydney.
About Ulvi Haagensen
Born in Sydney, Ulvi spent many years based in Tallinn and completed her PhD in artistic research at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2024. Her practice spans drawing, sculpture, installation and performance, often using familiar activities such as cleaning and gardening to investigate where everyday life ends and art begins. She returned to Sydney in 2025 and is currently working with four imaginary friends in a studio overlooking an avocado tree, with a tiny fern growing among its roots.
Ulvi’s artistic career stretches across more than three decades and between Australia and Estonia. She has held solo exhibitions in Sydney, Tallinn, Tartu, Vilnius and Sweden, alongside an extensive list of international group exhibitions, and has been recognised several times at the Tallinn International Drawing Triennial. Her work is held in public collections including the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design and Australian collections in New South Wales.
Teaching has also been a substantial part of her career. Ulvi taught at the Estonian Academy of Arts for many years, as well as previously at Sydney Institute of Technology and Randwick College of TAFE. Her 2024 doctoral research, In the In-Between, explored the very territory that continues to run through her work — the line between art and everyday life.
Meet Ulvi’s imaginary friends
Agnes-Maria is not the first imaginary friend to enter Ulvi’s work. During her doctoral research at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Ulvi worked alongside three others — Thea Koristaja, Olive Puuvill and Artist Researcher, or AR.
They were more than fictional characters. Ulvi used them as a creative and research method, allowing her to approach her work from different perspectives, ask questions she might otherwise dismiss as too simple or strange, and move between making art, performing everyday activities and analysing what was happening.
Each developed a loose role. Thea — whose surname means “cleaner” in Estonian — cleaned and performed, asking questions about dirt, cleaning and when an everyday action becomes art. Olive was largely the maker, improvising with whatever materials and tools were at hand, while AR stepped back to observe, analyse and make sense of it all.
Ulvi makes clear in her thesis that ultimately they are different versions of herself rather than separate identities. Their roles overlap, but together they gave her another way to think, create and question the sometimes rather slippery boundary between art and ordinary life.
Agnes-Maria Aednik — aednik means gardener in Estonian — appears to have joined the company more recently. And, appropriately enough, she gardens.
We’re intrigued. If you are too, there are only a few days left to go and see it for yourself. A curious installation tucked among the trees in a North Sydney park sounds like a pretty good excuse for a wander, imaginary friends optional.
Read more
More about Ulvi Haagensen and her work here
North Sydney Council exhibition information
Acknowledgement
Big thank you to Ulvi Haagensen for information and photos!
