BIOGRAPHY
Raji Salan's practice is multi-disciplinary which includes drawing, collage, photography and video that is often guided by a research and process, interested in exploring various notions dealt through the lens of nature. She is concerned with a knowledge exchange between art and science to discuss layered narratives that images present or fail to present to us. Someone that works outside of the scientific domain, the importance of knowledge and how scientific images produce and present this are ideas that have developed in her work. Manipulating images to re-present them, speculate how we perceive and relate to images in a visually driven culture, further inquiry takes place as to how these can be used to provide information and discourse of our impact on the natural world.
A poetic and aesthetic observation of the natural world captured through photography is often a driving force behind her work as she seeks for narratives that remind us of the fragile and resilient versions of it. We are confronted with a nature under threat, a tension and ambiguity exist within the play of scale. Representations of nature become unfamiliar and thus emerges a place where a deeper narrative is revealed. The images allure us to look again, taking a small part of the plant, the seed, turning this into a cause for reflection through the magnified scale aligning with the grand narrative that comes from them. How do we participate in that knowledge exchange and what is our role within it, is it passive or empathetic? How can images provide these profound narratives so that we are no longer passive observers? Art is capable of creating images using scientific tools to highlight narratives that deepen our understanding of nature and the issues that threaten a coexistence.
Robbie Blackhall-Miles is one of a new generation of innovative horticulturalists blending the spheres of gardening and conservation. He is the driving force behind ‘FossilPlants’; a 'backyard botanic garden' housing a collection of early evolutionary plants alongside many others. Renowned for succeeding with difficult to grow plant species, he uses his skills to propagate rare and unusual plants for horticulture. As a teenager, heavily influenced by the great plant hunters like Forrest, Kingdon-Ward and Banks and conservationists such as Gerald and Lee Durrell, Robbie's garden was stuffed full of botanical treasures such as Gunnera, Giant lobelias, Puya and hardy orchids.
Robbie's current, personal research is in trying to understand two plant families: the more unusual members of the Ericaceae and the glamorous Southern Hemisphere Proteaceae, both deemed tricky in cultivation. Other passions include Oncocyclus Iris, Parnassia, Diapensiaceae, plant/fungi interactions and understanding the evolutionary links between the world's plant species.
In his role writing for ‘The Guardian’, he entices gardeners to grow something a little bit different, to step out of the boundaries set by mainstream horticulture. He does this by providing useful insights into how these plants have been introduced into cultivation, as well as tips on how to grow them.
In 2015 the decision was made that he would set up a nursery of his own. The Plant Conservation Research Nursery project was born and a crowdfunding campaign got the project off the ground. You can help him research the cultivation and conservation of threatened plants by donating to the conservation research nursery project.
Robert Blackhall-Miles FLS
Help save endangered species; donate to Robbie's Plant Conservation Research Nursery project. Donate here