Herbarium Room (2025)
Found objects, Photograph collage
A pleasure having the opportunity to show our collaborative work and ongoing project
@thephotographersgallery alongside friends and computational artists to celebrate the 21st birthday of
@flickr . A huge thank you to
@gluck and
@plummerfernandez for making it happen.
This work explores systems of order, categorisation, collection and archival logic, questioning how botanical knowledge is stored, separated, and valued. Using the Flickr API, we sourced publicly shared images tagged with “marigold” and extracted the botanical element from each photograph-isolating the flower from its original context, environment, and narrative.
Each marigold is printed and mounted onto an archival sheet, echoing the aesthetics of institutional specimen collections. However, by removing the flower from its surrounding image, the piece disrupts the original intention of the photograph, challenging the viewer to consider what is lost and what is invented when nature is reduced to data or specimen.
This newly constructed archive is presented alongside a personal collection of old newspapers hoarded by one of the artist’s father, whose obsessive method of keeping information reflects a different form of categorisation: one driven by sentiment, accumulation, and domestic routine. Juxtaposing the informality of familial storage with the authority of scientific documentation, the piece invites reflection on what we choose to preserve, how we impose structure on the natural world, and the quiet chaos of personal and public memory.
