2026
Material: Bunias orientalis, pressed, mounted and framed
Dimensions: 70 x 100 cm
I tend a plot over spring and early summer. Part of this work centres on the removal of Bunias orientalis, a neophyte that has travelled borders, intentionally and accidentally, been planted here most likely with some purpose and spreads now readily, crowding out other plants.
To remove a plant also allows me to study its roots and characteristics. I press one specimen whole – roots, stem, leaves, flowers – a herbarium sample measuring one metre by seventy centimetres, and as such both record and relic, a document of presence, and of absence.
Pressed at the moment of flowering, the specimen holds a single point in time. Since then, the season has moved on around it. Mounted and framed, Bunias orientalis is seductively beautiful; its delicate structure and bright yellow flowers are at odds with how difficult it is to contain.
The frame with the pressed specimen stands outside amongst the plants that remain. The glass of the frame reflects the living plants around it, as if the framed specimen and the growing world mirror each other and overlap inseparably.
Pressing plants draws on the long tradition of botanical collecting and the impulse to preserve, classify, and make permanent what is by nature transient. Yet where the herbarium traditionally serves science, this specimen serves something other. It is an inquiry into belonging and not belonging, into what it means to arrive somewhere and to take hold, and into the work of making room for those who cannot compete.
Tending plants is also an act of asking who gets to stay, a constant negotiation about space and attention, and a reminder that decisions in the garden are rarely reversible.
