Big news! Dispersal x Korean luxe:
Magnolia tripetala is the new face of cult couture, paired with a fragrance & featured in large format catalogue to launch Tamburin’s new perfume line “SOLACE: a handful of solace” at a month-long Seoul installation — featuring a 2-story nude sad man & a giant candle & all sorts of multi-sensory experiences. Wild!
Solastalgia’s Flora was the visual metaphor for a/b: Auto/ Biography Studies’s special issue ‘Life Writing in the Anthropocene’.
“Laurent’s immersive installation transforms the conventions of portraiture and the silhouette to narrate the extinction of plant life, capturing a key feature of the Anthropocene: it is, ‘first and foremost, about death on an unimaginable scale’ … The force of Laurent’s portraits [suggest] the importance of artistic practice, as well as scholarly theory, in expanding thinking on life matters and life writing.”
Read More7-10 June, 2019. I’ve been invited to ‘Agri/Cultures Seed-Links’, a three-day exhibition at Svalbard Seed Vault, a global seed bank on a Norwegian island near the Arctic circle. Artists will present works that articulate the relationship between biological & cultural diversity, with a particular focus on seeds. With plant species disappearing, seeds are genetic resources for adaptation to climate change. Svalbard’s goal is to store and protect samples of every type of seed from every seed collection in the world.
Read MoreI glued the last flower! The corridor is finished! Thanks especially to Vestalia Chilton, Noor Kadhim, and anyone who navigated around my paper clippings, glue, and dried flowers during the installation. If you can’t visit the work, explore it over here on my site, where I’ve included extinction profiles for all the silhouetted species.
Read MoreI wrote about photography, specimen collecting, personal narrative, and Anna Atkins for INKQ’s second issue. Publisher & botanic illustrator Jessica Shepherd is a dear friend & indefatigable champion of interdisciplinary art & science. Her own agapanthus painting, ‘The Kiss’, is featured, along with work by David Nash and Niki Simpson. Limited edition run, fantastic print quality. Subscribe here.
Read MorePaper clippings for my upcoming art installation ‘The Age of Exploration meets Age of Extinction’ at The Exhibitionist Hotel in South Kensington, London. The final piece will profile extinct & endangered flora & will span a small corridor in the hotel. Opening August 2018, hopefully up for a few years.
Read MoreResearch for a new book is consuming the walls of my flat.
Read MoreThe last few months I’ve been traveling between Millenium Seed Bank in Wakehurt and Kew’s Herbarium in London to photography seeds & fruits of rare & endangered species for exhibition panels in Kew's Temperate House (reopening Spring 2018; come meet the plants & their seeds!).
Read MoreLondon's Kensington & Chelsea Review, vol. 5 issue 3. Cover feature & interview about the Dispersal project. Thanks to Tani Burns for super PR, Apollinaire Fine Arts for the exhibit, and Coco Kahn for the interview.
Read MoreChelsea Flower Show is divine! Honored to be one of ten photographers awarded an exhibition wall. Come say hello in the Grand Pavilion. UPDATE: The Royal Horticultural Society awarded ‘Dispersal’ a silver-gilt award.
Read MoreWith no disrespect to my specimens: "Mr. President Goes to Seed", on exhibition in Parody & Art show, at the Exhibitionist Hotel 18 May to 25 June.
Read MoreWe are open! Come see ‘The Fall’, 11-28 May, at Fitzrovia Gallery, 139 Whitfield Street, London, W1T 5E. Gallery hours: Wednesday through Sunday, 11am-7pm. Fifty-four of my photographs are exhibited, and we also have a full calendar of evening events.
Read MoreThis morning I presented a proposal for a new project, Dispersal: The Red List, at Kew Gardens, London. Thanks to all who attended. The series will include rare & endangered species, those that exhibit unique dispersal mechanisms, as well as Kew's historic work in conservation. Photo of the Apocynaceae collection, a family exhibiting a rare evolution of dispersal mechanisms. Every box here has a story I want to tell.
Read MoreThrilled to announce that the Dispersal series received the bronze medal in portfolio category in an annual international photography competition sponsored by Royal Botanic Garden at Kew. The six works are included in a traveling exhibition that will be at Kew’s Nash Conservatory through March 13. After that, the show will travel to Amsterdam (de Hortus Botanicus); Rettendon, UK (RHS Garden Hyde Hall); South Tyrol, Italy (The Gardens of Trauttmansdorff Castle); Gibraltar (Gibraltar Botanic Gardens); Norfolk, U.K. (National Trust Sheringham Park), then Sydney and New York City (locations TBD). Thank you, IGPOTY10, for the honor, and Jonathan Dawid, director of Apollinaire Fine Arts, who helped curate our selection of six wind-dispersed specimens.
Read MoreDISPERSAL is coming to University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley & runs Jan 17-30. I’ll be exhibiting 60 prints & hosting lots of events, including Jan 17 opening reception; Jan 18 gallery talk; Jan 29 intensive photography course; Jan 30 book talk. The solo show is a beautiful way to explore familiar & foreign plants in a new way. All specimens collected by yours truly over the last four years at the Garden. Info and registration here: Berkeley Botanical Garden
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