Seedscapes: Future Proofing Nature
- Submitting institution
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University of Plymouth
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 1762
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Impressions Gallery Centenary Square, Bradford, UK
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- As curator I selected artists and works that open up diverse questions through differing aesthetic approaches to create a dialogic installation that is intended as an intervention within contemporary environmentalist concerns. The exhibition critically engages photography and the botanical in relation to wellbeing and to seed security. It reflects my research into art photography as a means of investigation and exposition and foregrounds the presence of women photographers in ecological investigations through photographic media. These visual enquiries into seedbanks as centres for research, storage and seed security, and into woodlands, biodiversity and regeneration, are realised through differing methodologies and aesthetic strategies.
Research drew on previous curatorial and publication projects, particularly, Light Touch, Baltimore Washington International Airport, 2014 and ‘‘Imaging Nature: investigating change in the natural world’ in Lebas, Field Studies (2017). Critical thinking on art, ideological processes and social values relating to photography and ecology also developed through ‘Critical Environments and Photographic Investigations’, in Poisoned Pictures, PhotoResearcher 32, European Society for the History of Photography, 2019. Ongoing historical research into the inter-relation of photography and botany to date has included study visits to photo archives at Kew and the Austrian National Library.
As an exhibition, Seedscapes was intended to
a) foster awareness of sustainability issues, particularly seed security and biodiversity for the future;
b) foreground the contribution that art can make to ecological debates;
c) showcase five artists variously investigating seeds, woodlands and sustainability
d) instigate education and audience engagement opportunities through the gallery, the website, related articles and an (online) symposium. The event will address re-activating archives, art and activism (Nov 21, 2020).
e) Offer a small specialist gallery commissioning temporary exhibitions, the website is innovatory in offering a virtual (online) tour possibility for audiences unable to visit in person.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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