Işık Güner showcased in inaugural biennial botanical art exhibition at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Friday 16 October – Sunday 13 December 2020 Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
New and existing works by contemporary artists Lee Mingwei, Annalee Davis, Wendy McMurdo and Lyndsay Mann join works by over 40 established botanical artists — including Işık Güner — in Florilegium: A Gathering of Flowers at Inverleith House, Edinburgh. This biennial exhibition is the first of a new programme as Inverleith House begins its transformation into Climate House, following the award of the Outset Contemporary Art Fund's Transformative Grant.
The artists have responded to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh's (RBGE) globally important plant collection — comprising over 13,500 species — with works that reveal how flowers can elicit cultural, historic, geographic, socio-political and scientific ideas. The exhibition title derives from the traditional name for a collection of botanical artworks and forms part of RBGE's ambitious project to catalogue its plant collection through both botanical and contemporary art. Artists living and working internationally have overcome the considerable challenges of a global pandemic to create new works for Florilegium, many of which are shown here for the first time, marking the post-COVID-19 reopening of Inverleith House.
Running from 16 October to 13 December 2020, Florilegium: A Gathering of Flowers features works depicting plants that can be seen growing in the RBGE Glasshouses, alongside others of significant scientific value. These botanical artworks are joined by new and existing works from Annalee Davis, Wendy McMurdo, Lee Mingwei and Lyndsay Mann, which draw upon ideas of death, renewal, ritual and colonial history, spanning photography, moving image and works on paper.
A florilegium is, literally, a book of flowers — most commonly a collection of botanical paintings depicting a particular garden or plant family. Florilegium: A Gathering of Flowers is the first public exhibition arising from the RBGE Florilegium project, initiated in 2019, which recognises the need to expand the Garden's important collection of botanical illustrations in a planned and sustained way, ensuring that plants being grown and studied by RBGE staff will be represented by new works in the collection. RBGE botanists identify, describe and name plants new to science, and rely on botanical illustration and herbarium specimens as essential reference material.
The artistic depiction of plants has an ancient history, originally deployed as a means of identification, though by the end of the Renaissance, botanical painting had also come to be appreciated as an art form in its own right. In Scotland, one of the earliest books recording scientific illustrations of plants was Robert Sibbald's Scotia Illustrata (1684). Sibbald was the first professor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh and a founder of RBGE. The botanical illustrator's eye for detail continues to play a vital role in RBGE's 350-year history, bringing together scientific scrutiny and artistic skill to highlight the beauty and diversity of rare and endangered plants, and helping to communicate the essential message of conservation.
Emma Nicolson, Head of Creative Programmes at RBGE, said:
"From common weeds to exotic cultivars, flowers are deeply embedded within our lives and have long been an inspiration to artists. This visually stunning exhibition reveals how flowers can elicit cultural, historic, geographic, social and scientific ideas. Botany — the doctrine of plants — is a foundation for the exhibition, drawing together work by botanical illustrators from across the globe alongside contemporary artists who explore our wider relationship with flowers and nature.
This exhibition has something for everyone: from the beautiful detail and precision of botanical illustration, to Lyndsay Mann's storytelling in film that captures the hidden voices held in our herbarium, to Lee Mingwei's deeply engaging 'Invitation for Dawn' — a digital sister to his work 'Sonic Blossom' and an offering of a sonic gift: a song delivered to individuals in a live encounter with a classical opera singer via video.
We hope the show will provoke new ways of thinking and responding to plants, and encourage visitors to treasure their encounters with the art and the extraordinary diversity of flora in our Garden and Glasshouses. The year 2020 and the coronavirus pandemic are revealing truths about the fragility of our ecosystems and the urgent need to halt biodiversity loss. At a time when our ecological future depends so much on a deeper connection to the natural world, these artists present captivating and imaginative responses to plants and flowers — at a moment when that has never mattered more."
Listings Information
Florilegium: A Gathering of Flowers Friday 16 October – Sunday 13 December 2020 Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Open daily from 10.30am. Last admission 4.15pm in October; 3.15pm November–December. Free admission. Book a time slot to enter RBGE at: rbge.org.uk
To book a personal video performance of Lee Mingwei's Invitation for Dawn (Monday 16 November – Friday 11 December 2020), email your preferred date to: creativeprogrammes@rbge.org.uk
Press and image enquiries: Owen O'Leary — owen@ohreally.co.uk / +44 7815 992658; Nicola Jeffs — nj@nicolajeffs.com / +44 7794 694754
Notes to Editors
Participating artists in Florilegium: A Gathering of Flowers: Natalia Alatortseva, Julia Asenbaum, Claire Banks, Rattikorn Bunprakasit, Giovanni Cera, Annie Chen, Paresh Churi, Jessica Daigle, Annalee Davis, Sansanee Deekrajang, Maria Alice de Rezende, Sandra Doyle, Janet Dyer, Gülnur Ekşi, Akiko Enokido, Ann Fraser, Keiko Fujita, Işık Güner, Yoko Harada, Marianne Hazlewood, Cheryl Hodges, Sarah Howard, Mariko Ikeda, Mieko Ishikawa, Neera Joshi Pradhan, Thutploy Kaewpradub, Hideko Kamoshita, Sandunmali Kulasekara, Pornlert Laorsuwan, Nicola Macartney, Lyndsay Mann, Mike May, Mhorag McDowall, Wendy McMurdo, Lee Mingwei, Eunike Nugroho, Jacqui Pestell, Wichanee Pongpawasuit, Jane Roxburgh, Lizzie Sanders, Wendy Smith, Narongsak Sukkaewmanee, Anna Suprunenko, Dianne Sutherland, Margaret Trent, Nataya Udompat, Sunanda Widel, Michie Yamada and Tapita Yomnage.
Inverleith House was designed in 1774 by David Henderson for the Rocheid family and served as the official residence of successive Regius Keepers (directors) of RBGE until it became the founding home of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art from 1960 to 1984. Since 1986 it has maintained a continuous programme of temporary exhibitions spanning visual art and botanical science. Climate House marks a new era in the legacy of this leading contemporary art institution. For more information visit rbge.org.uk or follow @RBGECreative.
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is a leading international research organisation delivering knowledge, education and plant conservation action around the world. Its four gardens at Edinburgh, Benmore, Dawyck and Logan attract nearly a million visitors each year. It operates as a Non-Departmental Public Body established under the National Heritage (Scotland) Act 1985, principally funded by the Scottish Government, and is also a registered charity managed by a Board of Trustees. Its mission is "To explore, conserve and explain the world of plants for a better future." Learn more at rbge.org.uk.
Barbadian artist Annalee Davis's suite of drawings, As If The Entanglements Of Our Lives Did Not Matter, includes two family portraits referencing her mixed Caribbean heritage, alongside six drawings on ledger pages that ground the images in the history of the plantation system. Plants featured include Vervain, Bread and Cheese, Common Sow Thistle, Lady Palm, Paw-Paw, Sugar Cane and Wonder-of-the-World.
Scottish artist and photographer Wendy McMurdo's new series Night Garden was created during lockdown, inspired by the flowers growing in the garden beyond her studio. Watching the cycle of germination, growth and renewal from her window seemed in direct opposition to the world inside and online. McMurdo's mother died in early May, and in the weeks surrounding her death she spent her time documenting this growth cycle, which felt more urgent than ever.
Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei presents two works: 100 Days with Lily (1995), from a quarter of a century ago; and Invitation for Dawn, created during the current pandemic. 100 Days with Lily is a photographic portrait of a project in which Lee cultivated a single lily from seed to death, spending every moment with the flower while grieving his grandmother, documenting his own activities as the flower moved through its natural life cycle. Invitation for Dawn is conceived as a digital alternative to 禮 Li, Gifts and Rituals, deriving from Sonic Blossom (2013), in which a singer performs a song from Franz Schubert's collection of Lieder to a single seated listener.
Lyndsay Mann's cinematic essay A Desire for Organic Order is an immersive study of the Herbarium and the Centre for Middle Eastern Plants at RBGE. Made in 2016, this intimate and epic work weaves together testimonies, journal entries, diaries and letters from diverse voices, tracing archival materials and contemporary links between Scotland and the Middle East.
