2017 residency at The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, where I worked alongside botanists and a wider research team in the UK and Brazil to examine the collections of botanist and explorer Richard Spruce, who spent 14 years in the Amazon in the mid-19th century. Plantae Amazonicae was the resulting exhibition that represented my first encounters with Spruce’s ethnobotanical artefacts, herbarium specimens and notebooks.
The work has been made in collaboration with Luciana Martins (Birkbeck, University of London), William Milliken (Kew) and Mark Nesbitt (Kew), with photography by Elena Heatherwick. Supported by Arts Council England
Unfired clay vessel (jaguar). Clay dug from riverbeds, with charcoal from Equisetum
arvense mixed with jenipapo fruit (Genipa americana)
Unfired clay vessel (monkey)
Untitled (shelf). Unfired clay from riverbeds with plant fibres, Bixa orellana pigment, Fridericia chica dye on silk
Tucum, ink on paper
