Background
Botany can be traced back thousands of years and is closely connected with medicine. Early medical texts included "herbals," art-science botanical books that described healing plants, often featuring botanical drawings. During the Renaissance, Luca Ghini established the first botanical garden and created the first documented herbaria (Flanner, 2020). Despite this long history, medicinal plants are often underrepresented within public-facing educational institutions such as museums. Museum collections cannot be placed on permanent display due to factors that can cause damage to specimens and objects, including mould growth, pest infection, and pollen staining (Cassar, 1999). However, institutions such as the LSTM have successfully engaged the public with their scientific breakthroughs and history using an art-science toolkit; "Tropical Medicine Time Machine" (LSTM, 2023).
Lay Summary
This interdisciplinary cross-faculty research project brings art, science, and humanities together to develop a public engagement toolkit to prevent "plant blindness". The goal of this practice-based research is to enable wider public understanding of the importance of medicinal plants and the factors contributing to species loss.
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Plants are a rich source of medicinal compounds, both for the pharmaceutical industry and as traditional medicines, and still account for one-third of our current medicines (Newman and Cragg, 2012).
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The climate crisis is having a devastating impact on medicinal plants, with many species facing extinction, posing a significant threat to global health. This loss will affect both local indigenous communities that rely on traditional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry, which relies on these plants for the development of 80% of new treatments (Fokunang, 2011).
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The decline of medicinal plants will have long-term consequences for future medicine development, as new medicines will not be discovered or developed (Antonelli, 2023).
To address this issue, using a practice-based approach, art-science toolkits will be developed to educate the public and raise awareness of climate change impacts on plant loss. The toolkits will be developed through, and used in, interactive STEAM-based workshops and exhibitions in public-facing settings such as museums and galleries.
Impact surveys will gather public feedback at each event to enable iterative design/co-creation of the toolkits. By doing so, we can work together to protect medicinal plants for future generations.
Artist Inspiration
Laura St Pierre
Laura St.Pierre has been collecting and preserving flora from changing landscapes which form the subject for photographs, video work and installations. Her work is inspired by the past, present and the future of a place. Pierre uses techniques that are common to many botanists by preserving plants in isopropyl alcohol. The artist does this to preserve not only the plant but also their three-dimensional form, however this process removes the colour from the flowers and leaves which creates a ghostly appearance. Laura St. Pierre uses domestic jars and bottles something which personally reminds her of her grandmother's tradition of preserving natural foods and drinks. Pierre is mindful that although her plant specimens are not chosen because they are endangered, but she is aware that one day through climate change the plants may one day become something of the past and therefore is inspired to create a series of images, videos and installations that reinforce the memories of the landscape through her artwork (St Pierre, 2021).
Artist Rob Kesseler created a series of images called “A New Phytopia” which aims to translate nature to a wider audience through art practice. Kesselers images are strikingly abstract and consist of bold shapes, colours and textures, achieved by using a scanning electronic microscope. His work is a form of art botany and explores nature at a microscopic level, reinforcing the practice of art-science in educating the public. Kesseler worked with botanical scientists at Kew and explored art through both photography and microscopy in revealing the hidden world of plants. This has further developed into two books “Pollen, the hidden sexuality of flowers” and “Seeds, time capsules of life” (Kesseler, 2023).