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The Urpflanze (Part 1)

The Ur-pflanze (Part 1) was the first stage of an ongoing investigation. An analogy was made between the gallery, greenhouse and laboratory. The investigation explores philosophical and pragmatic networks between industry, aesthetics and plant forms, taking a lead from Goethe's notion of the Urpflanze. The Urpflanze - or primal plant - is Goethe's imaginary plant that contains coiled up within it, the potential to generate all possible future forms. Contemporary plant science similarly assumes the ability to create as yet undreamt of botanical objects, using an array of tools and techniques, such as nanoscience, transgenics and biomimicry. Plant science becomes an art of morphology and mutation, re-presentation and transformation, characteristics it shares with the medium of drawing.

Drawing was explored in 2, 3 and 4 dimensions – with sculptures fashioned from newspaper pulp and wooden armatures, reanimated plant manuals, collages, graphite drawings, sound recordings, animations – and a film composed of photographic stills recording every living plant I came into contact with during the 12 month period of investigation. There is a fascination with the innate processes and forms of botanical morphology, and in the ways in which this enters the economy and the imaginary through technological intervention. This original research drew a line of development from Goethe’s idea of the Urpflanze to contemporary biosciences and their incantations of new and infinite life forms, through the trope of ‘expanded drawing’, as both speculation and ‘completed’ work. It draws a parallel between the status of drawing and the contingency of scientific ‘fact’.

The artwork exhibited in a solo show commissioned by the Drawing Room, London and the Art Exchange, Colchester (2010) and the accompanying free publication (edition of 10,000 funded by ACE) was co-authored with writer Esther Leslie and published and distributed by Matt’s Gallery and the Drawing Room, London.