RETURN TO RECENT WORKS
HOME HERBARIUM SPECIMENS, 2021
Details
Wall-mounted Pressed Flax Specimens collected by #Lineation growers
Home Spirit Specimens, 2020
Details
100 glass tubes, flax in Copenhagen solution
Home Plaster Specimens, 2020
Details
New Zealand flax leaves cast in plaster bandage
Photography: Keith Hunter & Sally Jubb
Links
Art Lates - 2 (at 44 mins)
Patricia Fleming Projects
Botanics
Doris Press Review
Hyperallergic Review
Map Magazine Review
DESCRIPTION
An exhibition of new works exploring the lifecycle of flax (Linum usitatissimum) and considering the symbiotic nature of its nurture, evolving the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s 350-year relationship with the plant.
Spun flax fibres produce linen, one of the most ancient forms of textile. Prized too for its seeds’ medicinal properties, flax featured in Hortus Medicus Edinburgensis, the first catalogue of a plant collection in Scotland, which listed 3,000 plants growing at Edinburgh’s Physic Garden in 1670 – later to become RBGE. In 2021, Borland planted flax at RBGE, continuing the contemporary and historical cycles embedded in this project. In Relation to Linum is an intimate reconnection with the ecological heritage and future of growing and making practices, and their associations with care.
Extract from RBGE Guide
Home Herbarium Specimens - description, research/Process
Following RBGE’s ‘Guide to Collecting Herbarium Specimens in the Field’, flax specimens in full bloom were pulled during summer 2021 and pressed at home by #Lineation growers-turned-female-field-botanists, based throughout the country. Although from the same seed batch, the plants represent a range of sizes and forms according to their specific growing conditions. The field guide instructions state; fold any long stems into ‘N’ ‘V’ or ‘Z’ shapes as appropriate, producing the suggestion of a runic language written on the gallery walls in flax.
It is increasingly acknowledged and understood that, historically, the role of female botanists and horticulturalists has been underrepresented. Work is on-going at the Botanics to redress this omission and bring to the fore the place of women in the story of plants, horticulture, and healing, from the apothecaries of the seventeenth century to the scientists of the present day.
Home Spirit Specimens - description, research/Process
Flax is reckoned to have a 100-day growing cycle, from sowing to harvest. Borland attempted to replicate the process of preservation used in RBGE’s Spirit Collection, with a specimen of flax pulled each day throughout its growing cycle. Preservation in alcohol removes the colour from plant specimens leaving a translucent ghost of the original. The flax seedlings were initially preserved in vodka, given the shortage of industrial alcohol during summer 2020 due to use in hand-sanitiser. They are displayed in specially made laboratory glass vessels with the bowed, heavy flower heads of the largest specimens accommodated through bends made by hot glass work.
Home Plaster Specimens - description,research/Process
During 2020 the artist regularly visited a series of the majestic plant Harakeke, the New Zealand flax, in gardens and public spaces surrounding her home, making plaster casts of the leaves of each before using the fibres in papermaking. “I used the plaster bandage deliberately and don’t try to hide it. There are many associations with plaster casting that I have explored in earlier works; an historic association with preservation and with death through plaster cast death masks, anatomical and monumental sculpture. One of the medicinal uses of the Māori New Zealand flax was as a bandage with the stiff flower stalks used as splint. I believe there are many rituals associated with the harvesting of Harakeke in Māori culture, including asking permission to harvest and gifting the unusable parts of the leaves back to the plant.”
Early Europeans settler colonists present in the 1700s, saw how Māori people made ropes, baskets and cloaks made from Harakeke, The New Zealand flax plant Phormium Tenax. They named the plant ‘flax’ because they thought it ‘s fibres resembled those of linen. It was brought to the UK from New Zealand in the 18th century to be trialled as an industrial fibre producing plant; following failed attempts to work with the plant fibres on an industrial scale, it is now a popular ornamental, architectural plant and regular garden escapee. Unlike the true flax, which is herbaceous, Harakeke is a large, perennial, evergreen that, with daylilies, belongs to the family now known as Asphodelaceae.
