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- 2018
'Homage to the Seed' is the title of an ongoing project exploring Art, Seeds and Biodiversity launched
February 2010 at Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Mt Coot-tha for the 2010 Artist-in-Residence program.
This project was born of a collaboration with the on-site 'Seeds for Life' Seed Lab (set up by Kew Garden's Millennium Seed Bank Project) with the underlying objective of spurring on public awareness of the critical role of seeds and the human impact on global plant heritage. The seed lab was central to the project - a site of research, crucial dialogue with staff and volunteers, journal and weblog documentation. In 2011 the project continued to gather momentum through invitations to participate in diverse Brisbane community events, giving lectures, workshops and presentations and in October/November conducting a UK Research Trip and KEW Millennium Seedbank Residency in West Sussex with the support of the Australian Cultural Foundation and kind Donors.
In 2010 bringing this somewhat obscure work to the public's eye meant giving a strong accent on Relational Aesthetics practice to facilitate, through a series of events, the key undertaking 'to champion the seed' to audiences unfamiliar with the extraordinary diversity and particular vulnerabilities of the world's seed heritage . In electing to pursue this multi-layered approach to the 'dispersal' of information the material provided covered all bases... from simple to complex ...encouraging both casual and formal engagement. The weblog further boosted public engagement by traversing a broad spectrum of ideas around seeds, people, conservation, biodiversity, science and art.
In 2010 the fact that the project coincided with the 2010 UN International Year of Biodiversity was an added catalyst which drew new audiences to consider both the regional plant biodiversity, indigenous plants, and the vital relationships between the population, economy, land and plants - locally and abroad. Whilst researching the abundant species of Queensland rainforest fruits the journal sketches and notations of cross-sections of the fruit's seed capsules became the visual means to represent this manifest regional plant variation. Simultaneously literal and symbolic, they refer to ancient and perennial symbolic languages across culture and time, yet allow for a contemporary imagining on biological diversity.
This deliberation on biodiversity across time - past, present and future - and humanities' place in all of this was the primary concern of the artist in the first year of this art-meets-science project and now continues into 2012 with plans for a second book which takes a more lateral approach born of increasingly critical issues around Seeds and Biodiversity that only 3 years ago, when the project was first conceived, was much less intense and widely discussed than it now is. For this reason the artist chooses to continue focusing both her art practice, teaching and communications largely on this critical material.
Clicking on the UK Trip tab documents this hugely stimulating and productive UK adventure which forged engaging connections to people in varied leading projects working to create crucial future-oriented pathways in the realm of plant biodiversity, habitat and food security... this was a defining experience that commented the artist's commitment to this project well into the future.
NB: This website tracks the years since this project was launched. Since 2011 Facebook page: Homage to the Seed and since 2013 Instagram account: Sophie Munns continue to follow the story as it has evolved.