Plants on Paper: curatorial practice and the decolonization of collections of scientific prints and drawings

The Plants on Paper workshop will draw on the RBGE Collections to develop much needed knowledge exchange workshops in Edinburgh, bringing together curators and artists from specific originating diaspora communities.

ABOUT THE PROJECT:

The project is funded by Getty as part of the Paper Project initiative and has the following goals:

Raise awareness of RBGE’s extraordinary art collection - Identify and share relevant key works as case studies to explore the collections.
Knowledge transfer - Consider ways in which historic natural history collections of works on paper encompass, represent, and safeguard knowledge. Explore the curatorial challenges (cataloguing, digitisation, display, etc) relating to natural history art collections. Generate greater understanding of the collections and their role as a resource addressing current cultural and environmental concerns.
New Perspectives - Situate the project within the broader decolonizing practice of museum collections.
Stimulate new approaches - Recognise the game changing potential of digital platforms for both knowledge and care of collections and the opportunity to amend silences and absences from the records.
Cultural exchange – The project demonstrates RBGEs commitment to fostering cultural exchange through the creating of a long-term network for exchanging best practice, fostering collaboration and mutual support.
Increased Visibility – The project will attract media coverage and attention, raising awareness of both the host organisation and those involved in the project, positioning them as significant contributors to the international dialogue around works on paper and natural history collections.

THE PROGRAMME STRUCTURE:

2 x digital pre-workshop seminars.
Fully-funded residency at RBGE in Edinburgh from Saturday 5th to Sunday 13th October 2024 with immersive experiences and behind-the-scenes visits.
Seminars on topics including botanical art techniques, conservation, and curation strategies.
Visits to other collections in Scotland, e.g. the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow.

BENEFITS FOR PARTICIPANTS:

The workshop will benefit the participants in a number of ways:

Cultural Exchange - Provide an opportunity to network with individuals from diverse backgrounds who are facing similar challenges, leading to a deeper understanding and appreciation of different approaches and contexts.
Networking Opportunities – Participants have the chance to build valuable connections and networks with fellow curators, researchers and artists from across the globe, opening up potential collaboration and future opportunities in the field. The opportunity to be part of cross-regional and cross-cultural dialogue, offering a platform for meaningful exchange and collaboration
Exposure to new artworks – With exceptional access to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s internationally important collections of botanical art, participants will experience a wide range of artworks, including those not readily accessible in their home countries, broadening and deepening their knowledge.
International Platform - The project will provide a platform for participants to showcase their own projects, institutions and practice to an international audience, gaining exposure and recognition.
Professional Development – Participants will be able to engage in workshops, discussions and seminars with experts in the field enhances professional skills, knowledge and critical thinking.
Inspiration and Creativity - The experience of a different cultural setting helps to promote personal growth, increased adaptability and a broader world view.
Cross Cultural Learning - The creation of an ongoing sense of community with other participants, speakers and the RBGE community fostering insight into how other organisations work.

LONG LASTING IMPACT: Our ambition is that connections made during the project will be continued beyond the workshop and lead to ongoing collaborations and lasting collegiate friendships.

ONLINE PRE-WORKSHOP SEMINARS:

Our first digital pre-workshop seminar was held on August 20th, during which our ten participants introduced themselves, their work, and their aims in participating in the Plants on Paper workshop. We discussed topics including de-colonial approaches versus indigenising practices in museums, interdisciplinary approaches in botanical research and illustration, climate change, conservation, and cultural heritage in relation to botany. Dr. Siôn Parkinson, a research fellow at RBGE, also gave a presentation on his research at RBGE and how cultural heritage can be revealed through exploration of the senses, in particular, scent and sound. Parkinson highlighted the reliance science and art have on another.

Our second digital pre-workshop seminar was held on September 13th, during which Lorna Mitchell, RBGE's head of Library and Archives, presented the history of RBGE, its collections, and its global impact. We then heard from Amanda Thomson on her work in the Silent Archive exhibition held at Inverleith House and the stories, messages, and global histories that can revealed through botanical collections.

OUR SPEAKERS & TUTORS:

Plants on Paper will host a number of presentations, art workshops, and discussions held by a diverse group of professionals, each a leader in their field, ready to engage, educate, and empower our participants throughout the week. Below is a list of our participating tutors.

Henry Noltie -

After studying botany at Oxford, and Museum Studies at Leicester, Henry Noltie worked at RBGE from 1986 to 2017 as a curator and taxonomist. For 14 years he worked on the Flora of Bhutan project, leading the team for its concluding years. He wrote two of the volumes of the Flora, relating to the monocots, for which he received a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. From 2000 his work was on historical aspects of the rich herbarium and illustrations collections of the RBGE, especially relating to India, which combined nomenclatural research with historical and art-history studies and the mounting of exhibitions at Inverleith House. This resulted in a series of publications on Scottish East India Company surgeons, and the botanical drawings they commissioned from Indian artists in the late 18th and early 19th century. The last of the Indian monographs, published in 2016 and 2018, consists of three volumes on the collections of Hugh Cleghorn (1820–1895), a pioneering Forest Conservator, but also the source of one of the largest groups of botanical drawings and many important books in the RBGE collection. As a Research Associate both of Kew and Edinburgh Henry continues to work in all these areas of interest.

Sonia Mehra Chawla-

Sonia Mehra Chawla is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher based in New Delhi, India. Working at the intersection of art and science, her artistic practice explores notions of ecology, sustainability and conservation through a multispecies lens. Sonia often explores and examines the multifaceted relationship between colonial power and scientific knowledge, providing insights into botanical politics and conflicts, the often-overlooked histories of colonial capitalism, and the challenges of our possible future(s). Sonia’s recent exhibitions include, 'Silent Archive', Inverlieth House, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh (2024), Alien Worlds, Wardlaw Museum, University of St Andrews, Scotland (2024), Critical Zones, a travelling exhibition in South Asia, co-produced by ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe and Goethe-Institut, South Asia (2022-24), ‘The Beauty of Early Life’ at ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2022), ‘New Natures: A Terrible Beauty is Born’, CSMVS Museum Mumbai, in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Mumbai (2022), ‘Evolutionary Potential’, solo exhibition, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart in collaboration with the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin (2022), ‘The Rooted Sea’, solo exhibition at Summerhall, part of Edinburgh Science Festival 2022, ‘Entanglements of Time & Tide’, solo exhibition, Castle Mills, Edinburgh Printmakers, in collaboration with Marine Scotland, Creative Scotland, and ASCUS Art & Science, Edinburgh (2021), (UN)Containable Life, a comprehensive solo exhibition in the UAE, spanning a decade of artistic practice, 1x1 Art Gallery, Dubai. (2021), and ‘Driving the Human’ at Radialsystem, Berlin (2021)

Işık Güner -

Işık Güner studied Environmental Engineering at Marmara University in Istanbul. After her graduation, 2006, she began working full time as a Botanical Artist. She has prepared 40 plates for the book ‘Plants from the Woods and Forest of Chile’. Completing this book project took seven years and was published in 2015 by RBGE. During this project, many of her paintings were awarded with ‘Gold Medal’ and selected ‘Best in Show’ in international botanical art exhibitions at ‘RHS, London’ and ‘Biscot, Edinburgh’. In addition, the book has been awarded ‘Excellence in Botanical Art and Illustration’ in 2017. Following years, she became involved with the ‘Transylvania Florilegium’ book project being created under the organisation of Prince of Wales. During 2015 – 2016 she was working on ‘Beauty of Orchids, China’ and ‘Plants of Nepal’ projects which were conservation plants projects that focused on endangered and medicinal plants. Some of her paintings from these projects are in the ‘Shirley Sherwood collection’, London, ‘Hunt Institute’, USA, ‘Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh’, Scotland. She is currently working as a tutor at Diploma Botanical Illustration at Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh and as an art editor of ‘Illustrated Flora of Turkey’. Her education book ‘Botanical Illustration from life’ has been published in 2018 in six languages; Turkish, English, Spanish, French, Korean and Chinese. Currently she is working on her new book ‘Habitat’.

Website: www.isikguner.com

Hannah Sabapathy -

Hannah Sabapathy is a designer who works with decorative elements. She trained as a printed textile designer at The Royal College of Art. Hannah combines a variety of printing methods and materials to make unexpected collages of pattern. She is currently a Leeds Opportunity Research Scholar in the School of Design, University of Leeds, researching British imitations of South Asian textiles in the nineteenth century. Hannah was selected by The University of the Art Decolonising institute as part of the 20/20 project, which brings together twenty ethnically diverse artists with twenty UK cultural collections. The work for this project will go on permanent display when the museum opens in 2025. During her recent residency with DCA Print Studio x Jerwood, Hannah researched the depiction of commercial South Indian plants and their relationship with textile design. She is interested in the role that botanical material played in trade collections and collecting. Hannah has undertaken residencies at The University of Wales Trinity St David, Hospitalfield and Cove Park. She continues to explore British copies of South Asian textiles during the nineteenth century and make work in response to this.

Amanda Thomson -

Amanda Thomson is a writer and visual artist who lives and works in Strathspey and Glasgow, where she is a lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art. Her practice is multi-modal and explores the crossovers between art and writing, text and image, print, sound, film and language. She has a particular interest in landscapes, the natural world and our relationships to and within them. Her work, often rooted in the Scottish Highlands, incorporates explorations of identity, movement and migrations, human and more-than-human, interweaving personal, social, ecological and natural histories to explore how places come to be made. From 2022-24 she was one of three Endangered Landscapes Artists-in-Residence for Cairngorms Connect, a landscape restoration project. Her writing is found in several anthologies and on BBC Radio and she has published three books: A Scots Dictionary of Nature (Saraband Books), Microbursts, a collaboration with Elizabeth Reeder (Prototype Press), and Belonging, Natural Histories of Place, Identity and Home (Canongate Books), which was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, 2023 and the Kayva Prize, 2024. Recent exhibitions include ‘Lightly, Tendrils’ at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow and ‘The Silent Archive’ at RBGE. Boundary Layers, a video-essay about the mosses and flora of Ravenscraig, the site of what was Europe’s largest steelworks, was part of Scotland’s collateral event at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. She is a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper’s Country Diary.

Website: www.passingplace.com

Siôn Parkinson -

Siôn Parkinson is a visual artist, composer, performer, and writer investigating our sensory relationship with the nonhuman world, especially fungi.Siôn joined RBGE in January 2024 as an Early Career Research Fellow. His two-year study, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), is titled ‘Fragrance in the Fungarium: A Creative Approach to the Olfactory Heritage of Mushrooms. Originally trained as a sculptor at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and The Slade School of Art (both London), he received his PhD in sound studies from the University of Leeds, where he was an Amanda Burton Scholar. Alongside his own art and music practice, Siôn worked for over fifteen years as an exhibition curator and producer for institutions including: Cape Farewell, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (both London), and An Tobar (Isle of Mull). He was also the inaugural creative director of the Dundee Design Festival from 2016-2018.

Jacqui Pestell -

Jacqui Pestell is the Botanical Illustration Course Leader at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Jacqui trained at Trent Polytechnic and Goldsmiths in London, majoring in textile and fashion, and Education of Art and Design. After working as a textile designer for four years, she qualified as a teacher working in schools in London while developing her reputation as a freelance illustrator, artist and mural painter. Jacqui became the Artist in Residence at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1997 where she has established a reputation as a first-class teacher and botanical artist and led on the development of the Edinburgh Diploma in Botanical Illustration.

Lisa Cumming -

Lisa Cumming is a Paper Conservator at National Museums Scotland, with more than 20 years experience in paper conservation, including the preparation of Audobon’s 'Birds of America’ for exhibition in Edinburgh in 2022.

MEET OUR PARTICIPANTS:

Maria Jose Arce

María José Arce is a Chilean illustrator and architect with a deep passion for nature and art. She earned her Bachelor's in Architecture from the Central University of Chile and specialized in illustration with postgraduate studies at the University of Finisterrae in 2009, followed by a scholarship in Barcelona in 2010-2011. In 2016, she obtained a Botanical Illustration Diploma from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

With over 15 years of experience, Maria Jose has illustrated more than twenty books for children and adults, receiving recognition in various literary awards. Her work often highlights the beauty of nature, reflecting her connection to it. Currently, she serves as the Director of Art at the Chilco Foundation, focusing on conservation and environmental education. The Chilco Foundation collaborates with organizations like the Botanical Garden of Edinburgh. Maria Jose has conducted illustration workshops for over 15 years, contributing to sustainability and nature preservation initiatives.

David Ayala-Alfonso

David Ayala-Alfonso is a curator, writer, and researcher living and working in Mexico City. He is a guest curator for Independent Curators International and Op. Cit.; a Visiting Critic for the Ford Family Foundation, and for At The Transit Bar series in Toronto; a mentor for different residency programs in Mexico City, an editor at the Journal of Visual Culture, and an author and advisor for a series of editorial projects in the US, Mexico, and the UK.

He has published books, chapters, and articles on visual culture, critical heritage, art history, critical urbanism, art and education, and art in the public realm; he has also delivered numerous international lectures. His work as an artist and curator has been showcased extensively in the United States, Latin America, Asia, and Europe.

Ayala-Alfonso has received various awards, including the Fulbright Grant, the AICAD post-graduate Teaching Fellowship, the ICI-Dedalus Award for Curatorial Research, and the Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research at SAIC. He holds an MA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a Specialization in Art Education from the National University of Colombia, and he has done different curatorial residencies in France, Colombia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

Syarifah Nadhirah

Syarifah Nadhirah is an architect by practice, a Visual Artist, and currently serves as Creative Director (under the Forest Conservation team) at Forest House. At the moment, she is curating a community space dedicated as a Forest Learning Centre at the Perdana Botanical Gardens in KL—for the public to learn about Malaysia’s ecological heritage while also interacting with various environmental organizations championing forest, marine and wildlife conservation.

Syarifah’s work focuses on cataloguing Malaysia’s edible plants in her book, Recalling Forgotten Tastes. Her most recent work explores ideas of memory and matter of plant migration, resulting in her solo exhibition, ‘Measure of Seeds’. Syarifah’s artistic and research practice speculates on the trajectories of our botanical landscapes through printmaking, material culture and archival art. Her body of work cross-pollinates art with ecological relationships, exploring the role of tacit knowledge in decentralising narratives around plants, seed guardianship and food security in relation to the changing landscapes of the environment.

Working on these tangents, she has attended the Rimbun Dahan Southeast Asian Arts Residency, exhibited her artworks both locally and internationally in Thailand, and was invited to speak on international panels including On Biodiversity: History, Heritage, and Research in Asia at the National University of Singapore and Bangkok Literature Festival. Some of her artworks are collected by Rimbun Dahan and Jim Thompson Foundation.

Eunike Nugroho

Eunike Nugroho is a botanical artist and tutor based in Yogyakarta, and the founder of the Indonesian Society of Botanical Artists (IDSBA). Her work focuses on native plants and biodiversity conservation, promoting the preservation of plants and Indigenous knowledge through exhibitions and collaborations with institutions such as Bogor Botanic Gardens and the Royal Palace of Yogyakarta.

Eunike has received international accolades, including the RHS Best Botanical Artwork and Gold Medal (2023), the ASBA Dr Dick Rauh Award (2024), and TABA Gold Medals (2022, 2024). Her works are part of prestigious collections, including the Hunt Institute, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, RHS Lindley Library, and Shirley Sherwood Collection. She has exhibited across the USA, UK, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

As a keen plant grower, Eunike cultivates many of the plants she paints. Her project, "Hoyas of Indonesia," which documents native Hoya species, earned her the Royal Horticultural Society/RHS Gold Medal in 2023. She has also collaborated with international clients such as Canada Post, Shiseido, and Penguin Random House.

Through her work, Eunike hopes to inspire others to connect with the natural world and appreciate the importance of protecting plant life.

Rebecca Rice

Dr Rebecca Rice is Head of Art (Acting) at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. She is a curator and researcher dedicated to the study, interpretation and presentation of historical art in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research is deeply collaborative, often with the intention of interrogating the colonial situations in which art was produced, exhibited and collected. In her work, Rice constantly seeks to breakdown the boundaries between disciplines, particularly between art and science, so that their interconnectedness might be better understood.

Her current research focuses on nineteenth-century women botanical artists, part of a broader project that re-examines art in New Zealand in the late colonial period. Rebecca has recently co-curated Vaiei Tupuna, an exhibition of contemporary tapa cloth made in response to historical taonga (Adam Art Gallery, 2024), Te Mata Kāwai Heke o Papa ӏ Arranging Nature which explored the relationship between art and natural history (Te Papa, 2023) and Hiahia whenua: Landscape and desire (Te Papa, 2022). Recent publications include Flora: Celebrating our Botanical World (Te Papa Press, 2023) and ‘“My dear Hooker”: the botanical landscape in colonial New Zealand’ (Museum History Journal, Special issue, June 2020).

Through her work, Rebecca aims to inspire audiences and communities to connect with historical collections, to recognise their relevance to our pasts, presents and futures.

Michele Rodda

Dr Michele Rodda is an Italian plant biologist. His principal research interest is on the taxonomy and evolution of Apocynaceae subfamilies Asclepiadoideae, Periplocoideae and Secamonoideae in Southeast Asia and neighbouring regions, with a particular focus on Continental Southeast Asia, Borneo, and New Guinea. He has participated in numerous field expeditions to Laos, Myanmar and Sarawak, aimed at increasing the collection density in lesser explored areas as well as to train local botanists in field collection techniques. He has published more than 90 scientific papers and three books.

Michele also has a keen interest in botanical art and illustration and oversees exhibition curation at the Botanical Art Gallery (Singapore Botanic Gardens). Rodda is currently employed as the Senior Researcher & Curator of Exhibitions at the Botanical Art Gallery of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. He is currently a committee member of the Singapore Gardening Society and the Botanical Art Society (Singapore).

Nirupa Rao

Based in Bangalore, India, Nirupa Rao is a botanical illustrator and writer, with two published books: Hidden Kingdom- Fantastical Plants of the Western Ghats and Pillars of Life - Magnificent Trees of the Western Ghats. Rao’s career in botanical art began after receiving her BA in Sociology from the University of Warwick when she became inspired by the dramatic deforestation in her home of Bangalore and sought to document plant life for posterity. Her illustrations have been featured on the book covers of Amitav Ghosh’s Penguin-Random House novels and in Kew Botanical Gardens Indian Botanical Art- An Illustrated History. She has been awarded a grant as a National Geographic Young Explorer and received the National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship. She took part in a BBC Documentary, ‘‘Nature and Us- A History through Art.’ Rao has also participated in the Plant Humanities program at Dumbarton Oaks Research Centre through Harvard University, where her works were also exhibited. She also participated with the Centre for Wildlife Studies in a wildlife and conservation-education program. She recorded art classes for the national Doordarshan television channel in India and presented a TED Talk through TEDxGateway. She has also been featured in Forbes India, and Harper’s Bazaar India.

Malini Saigal

Malini is a graphic designer and botanical artist based in New Delhi. Over the last 15 years, she has worked with many national and international publishers, scholars, museums and institutions on a diverse range of books on Indian art and history. Some of the titles are 'Rapture: The Art of Indian Textiles', ' Courts of India: Past & Present', 'Reverse Glass Painting', 'Embroidered Textiles at the Hyderabad Court' , and the Multivolume Rashtrapati Bhavan Documentation Project. She has also scripted several titles for a range of graphic novels for young readers, on art, museums, mythology and history for Amar Chitra Katha publications, a very well-known brand of children's literature.

She has a deep interest in ethnobotany, and the innate connection between social patterns, customs and beliefs, crafts, and folklore, and the surrounding, sheltering landscape. In 2017, a UNESCO-Sahapedia fellowship provided the opportunity to do an ethnobotanical survey of the plants of the Thar desert, which has a unique ecosystem and biota that has not been too well documented. From 2018-2021 she devised and taught a course titled ‘Art Plantae’ at Ashoka University, India, which examined several themes in plant and landscape lore, mythology and ritual as observed in different mediums of Indian art, across time and space.

Present assignments include documenting plant histories and preparing field guides for species in the Thar desert and the forests of Central India. Another project simmering on the side is to map plant migrations across the globe, with a deep dive into the social and cultural ‘rootings’ along the way!

Anushka Tay

Anushka Tay is a UK-based artist and researcher working across text, textiles and music. She is in the final year of her PhD researching Chinese diaspora dress histories in the UK at the University of the Arts London, for which she was awarded a Techne scholarship by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her PhD took an interdisciplinary approach combining ethnographic interviews, visual and material culture analysis and archival research to explore how material objects inform diasporic ethnic identity. In 2022-2023, Tay was the Artist-in-Residence in the Archives and Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. She created new works in sound, textiles and on paper in response to historical records on 19th and early 20th century plant collections across China. She curated the exhibition: ‘Curious and Miscellaneous: New work and archival encounters’ at Kew Gardens Archive. Tay received her BA in Costume with Performance Design from the Arts University at Bournemouth, and her MA in the History and Culture of Fashion from London College of Fashion. She is an Associate Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies at the University of the Arts London.

Jasmine Thomas-Girvan

Jasmine Thomas-Girvan was born and raised in Jamaica and currently resides in Trinidad and Tobago where she creates art based around Caribbean history, myth, and literature as well as colonial narratives. Her work uses natural materials and indigenous plant life. Thomas-Girvan received her BFA from Parsons School of Design in New York. She primarily creates sculptures but is trained in jewellery and textile design. She had a solo exhibition last year, ‘Window on Memory’ at the Cohen Gallery at Brown University as well as a solo exhibition called ‘Bathed in Sacred Fire’ at the Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam. She has exhibited across the Caribbean, South America, Mexico, USA, and UK. During her time at Parsons, Thomas-Girvan received the Tiffany Honor Award for Excellence and has also received the Commonwealth Foundation Arts Award and the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Aaron Matalon Award.

CONTACT:

For more information, or, to get in touch with us directly please contact:

planthumanities@rbge.org.uk

Funded by Getty as part of the Paper Project initiative.

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