“1850” explores disrupting the authority and authorship of herbarium archive by giving voice to the collected and classified plant E00840651_5 taken from British Columbia and now resides in the Royal Botanical Garden in Edinburgh. E00840651_5 is taken before the dominion of Canada of 1867 and explore the colonial and migrant experience of plant E00840651_5 in their imagined narrative. The archival footage is from Garden By the Sea (1967) an educational film about Inverewe Garden a botanical garden in the Scottish Highlands Garden By the Sea (1967) and the ministry of public building and works film Royal Botanical Garden Plant House from the Moving Image Archive at the National Library of Scotland. This work was important in my practice as I contextualize the complex history between the UK and Canada in my art practice and explore how authorship is created in archives to serve a dominant narrative. Written and performed by artist.
SUGARTOWN is set in a bizarre and untamed garden in the bloom of spring, a matriarchal society where the male presence is removed. The characters in this animation are strange animal/monster/female hybrids; they are charmingly monstrous and represent the notion of being an “othering”.
