Garden of Light

A photographic exploration of plants through analogue, digital and photomicrography. Green Gallery, Dundee Botanic Garden. 3-17 Sept 2024.

This visual celebration of plant life has grown both from my MFA Art, Science and Visual Thinking last year and a general interest in plants, insects and the tiny organisms that are all around us but we cannot necessarily see. Recent explorations into mosses has led me into a fascinating microscopic world, whether it’s marvelling at the cell structure of sphagnum moss or a bizarre diatom, rotifer or tardigrade, living amongst these small but mighty watery plants.

I have recently started to explore the wonderful Tay reed beds and some of the work here is looking at this important habitat.

I have included a series of portraits of wildflowers displayed as portraits of humans might be in a domestic setting. Since the 1930s, we’ve lost 97% of our wildflower meadows in the UK, which I find incredibly sad. Native wildflowers can offer us carbon sequestration in grassland soils, medicinal benefits, food for a wide variety of pollinators and soil stability that can mitigate flooding and prevent nutrients from washing away. They also offer us beauty.

In the Botanic Garden plants are most definitely not taken for granted. But in the wider world they are. Yet we completely depend on them.