Siân Bowen
Gathered Notes: Re-encounter 2019
HD Video. No sound. 14’
Gathered Notes: Repeat 2019
HD Video. No sound. 7’
Gathered Notes: Retrieve 2019
HD Video. No sound. 10’
Gathered Notes are a series of nine video works that resulted from Bowen’s artist residency in northern Kerala at the remote Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary, set in the bio-diverse moist deciduous rainforest - and whilst travelling through the mangrove swamps of Kadalundi Reserve. At Gurukula, Bowen worked closely with local botanical specialists Suma Keloth, Sora Tsukamoto, Purvi Jain and Laly Joseph. Herbaria specimens brought from India to Scotland by surgeons during the 18th and 19th centuries, and engravings from the 17th century treatise on plants of Malabar, Hortus Malabarcius, were used to identify living examples of rare and vulnerable plants in the forest region.
Fleeting reflections of these plants were then filmed in a group of seven Victorian hand mirrors, echoing both historical plant hunting and the ephemeral and elusive nature of the plants themselves. Bowen also used a replica ‘Claude Glass’ (a historical black convex mirror), to create number of these works. The use of these mirrors encapsulates the vulnerable, jewellike quality of indigenous forest orchids and other rarely seen plants. plants and in doing so, challenges our experiential understanding of time and space.
Siân Bowen is Professor of Drawing, Arts University Bournemouth and works in her studios in Northumberland and on the Outer Hebrides. She has been Artist in Drawing at the V&A, London 2006-8 and from 2010-12, was Guest Artist in Drawing at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, where prints discovered frozen in the Arctic for three centuries, provided the framework for her solo exhibition at the museum. Her Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2017-19) led to collaboration with RBGE, Edinburgh and an artist’s residency in a remote rainforest region of India, resulting in her exhibition After Hortus Malabaricus; Sensing and Presencing Rare Plants, Inverleith House, RBGE in 2020. Siân is now Artist-in-Residence at the Economic Botany Collection, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, (2022-25) and is currently carrying out a three-month Daiwa Foundation research visit to Kyoto, Japan.
