Bloom

Chell, Edward (2015) Bloom. [Book art/Artist's book, Curation, Exhibition/show, Installation, Painting, Site-specific work]

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Sweet woodfruff, Sperula odorata. Individual panel from the Museum Installation.

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Woolly Thistle, Cirsium eriphorum. Individual Panel from the Museum Installation.

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Gorse or Furze, Ulex europaeus. Individual Panel from Museum Installation.

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Milk Thistle, Carduus nutans. Individual Panel from Museum Installation.

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Bloom Installation, 2015

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Bloom Installation 2, 2015

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Bloom Installation 3. 2015

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Bloom book front cover - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom book - Edward Chell

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Bloom - full text - closed access (11MB)

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Bloom Portfolio (1MB)

Details

Creators:

Chell, Edward

Description/Abstract:

Edward Chell's fascination with collecting and classification led him to the Horniman's rare folios of cyanotypes by Anna Atkins, the 19th century botanist and pioneering photographer. In 'Bloom', an installation of forty new painted panels, Chell responds to Atkins' work by portraying both live plants from the Horniman Gardens and pressed specimens from the museum's herbarium.

Chell's exhibit spotlights diverse narratives surrounding natural history and ecology, bringing into question the values and emotions that emerge when we make images of plants.

Atkins was a scientist and while the 'sun prints' she produced are exquisite, her objective was to document and understand natural genera. Through this process Atkins created repeat motifs and patterns that resonate with the decorative arts of her time, such as Willow Pattern china, floral wallpapers and Wedgwood's blue and white Jasperware.

Chell explores the tension between the scientific drive to define, understand and control, and the aesthetic impulse to capture the unruly gorgeousness of natural life.

Silhouettes bring associations of memorialisation and loss. While Atkins' recorded newly discovered species, today such images are premised on conservation and the threat of extinction.

An accompanying display which Chell, drawing on the museum's collections, conceived as a Cabinet of Curiosities, echoes these themes. Carboniferous fossils, 18th century ceramic plates imported from China and one of Atkins' rare folio volumes are displayed alongside Chell's ornamental pairs of car silencers, etched with roadside plants.

An accompanying colour illustrated publication 'Bloom' further unpacks these themes and ideas, with essays by Anna Ricciardi, Edward Chell and Hugh Warwick. Published by The Horniman museum and Gardens this was launched on Saturday November 14th 2015 in the Pavilion.

Item Type:

Art/Design Item

Other Contributors:

A Ricciardi (Contributing Author), H Warwick (Contributing Author), T Corum (Contributing foreword to book and Museum Curator)

Date:

November 2015

Edward Chell (for the exhibition works and images therewith), The Horniman Museum and Gallery along with the authors for the accompanying publication

Material:

Mixed media

Measurements or Duration:

Dimensions variable

Funders:

Arts Council England, Horniman Museum and Gardens

Locations / Venues:

Location

From Date

To Date

Horniman Museum and Gardens, London, UK

10 July 2015

6 December 2015

Projects or Series:

Bloom, REF2021

Additional Information:

The associated publication, Bloom, was launched at the Horniman Museum and Gardens on Nov 14 2015. The case bound, full-colour 96 page hard back book contains essays by Anna Ricciardi, along with another by ecologist and campaigner Hugh Warwick with an essay by myself. Ricciardi's essay 'Pools of Blue', dissects the world of Anna Atkins, her quick adoption of cyanotypes after its invention by Sir J.F.W. Herschel and the gendered activity of collecting plants in a world of science managed and displayed by men. Wide ranging cultural associations are made through Atkins' life and work, one of the earliest photographic pioneers, as a picture emerges where 'Bloom...embodies a gendered practice of walking and writing, wandering and wondering, expanding an understanding of place, pedagogy and experimentation with Atkins' work'.

Warwick's essay 'Plant Migrations' interrogates the complex and layered histories of plant collecting and agriculture and the developing interrelations between 'neophytes' and 'archaeophytes' via Captain Cook, Giant Hogweed and the Twyford Down road protest with thoughts ranging around the ecological premises that plants provide.

There is also an essay by myself illuminating some of the immediate thinking behind the exhibition, citing the Horniman's own history of collection and display and throwing a lens over our relationship with consumption and its environmental implications.
'Bloom' - published by The Horniman Museum and Gardens and supported by Arts Council England. ISBN: 978-1-903338-05-6

Schools:

School of Fine Art, Crafts & Photography

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