Tag: art

Grow and Magnify: An Illustrator’s Journey with Mycologists and Fungi

By Carole Papion My journey around Edinburgh Botanic Gardens started about four years ago, where in 2018 I enrolled in a practice-based PhD at the Edinburgh College of…

Florilegium: A gathering of flowers

In RBGE Creative Programmes’ exhibition in Inverleith House – Florilegium: A gathering of flowers, there is something for everyone. In the first room downstairs, you can lose yourself in the meticulously skilled detail of botanical paintings and illustrations, which have been contributed from around the world. Upstairs, you can meander from Wendy McMurdo’s Scottish Garden, through a Barbadian sugarcane plantation with Annalee Davis, pausing upon RBGE’s own Herbarium and Centre for Middle-Eastern plants with Lyndsay Mann, and finally travelling through a floral take on 100 days of traditional Taiwanese mourning with Lee Mingwei.

Closing the Loop

In March 2020, RBGE was due to host ‘Closing the Loop’ in partnership with Applied Arts Scotland – a workshop for makers exploring environmentally sustainable approaches to materials and making, to complement the Think Plastic exhibition in the John Hope Gateway. However, the temporary closure of the Garden, due to COVID-19, shifted this workshop into the virtual realm. The title of this discursive workshop ‘Closing the Loop’ drew on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s concept of circular economies, as described by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Mysteries inside the RBGE Illustrations Collection

In January 2020 Manshu Xu, an MSc student at Edinburgh College of Art began a work placement in the RBGE Library that involved creating an initial finding list…

Early Warning Signs

In a time of such unpredictable global conditions, we can’t pull ourselves away from thinking about the timely delivery of RBGE’s newly adopted artwork Early Warning Signs. Taking up a prominent position at the entrance to Inverleith House at the beginning of this year, it seems only too fitting that the spinning ‘climate/change’ (‘change/climate’) sign arrived during a particularly stormy January.

Part 2/2: ‘Sensing and Presencing the Imperceptible’, Siân Bowen’s Micro-conference

Alessandra Leruste has been a Volunteer gallery assistant with Inverleith House since 2019. Alessandra has an MA in History of art from the University of Edinburgh and has her own art-writing blog. Here, Alessandra shares her experience from the afternoon of Siân Bowen’s micro-conference at RBGE.

Part 1/2: ‘Sensing and Presencing the Imperceptible’, Siân Bowen’s Micro-conference

Klaudia Jaworska is in her third year at Edinburgh Napier University, studying International Festivals and Events Management and Marketing. As part of her course, she is currently carrying out a work placement in RBGE’s Public Engagement Department. Here, Klaudia shares her experience from the morning of Siân Bowen’s micro-conference at RBGE.

Siân Bowen’s Leverhulme Research Fellowship Exhibition: After Hortus Malabaricus: Sensing and Presencing Rare Plants

After Hortus Malabaricus: Sensing and Presencing Rare Plants marks the culmination of my four-year collaboration with the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). Having held my first solo exhibition in Scotland at Inverleith House at RBGE in 1995, it is wonderful to be able to exhibit here once again. In 2017, I was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to carry out the project. The Leverhulme Trust is known for supporting experimental proposals with an emphasis on outward facing journeys. The journey that the award facilitated has certainly been extraordinary – opening up possibilities to work with botanists, ecologists, historical researchers, cultural geographers, taxonomists and curators. It has allowed encounters with rare plants in darkened herbaria and light-filled South Indian forests and swamps; epistemologies used to ‘reveal’ specimens and sensory differences between plants’ live and preserved states.

Spinning a Yarn

Over the past year, Glasgow based artist Simone Landwehr-Traxler has been studying some of the lichen specimens in the Herbarium at RBGE from the islands of Scotland.   Her…

A sculptural take on our Herbarium collection

In May 2017 the Scottish sculptor Bobby Niven visited the Herbarium here at RBGE for a tour of the collection. He was on a fact finding mission as…

Plant Scenery of the World

Plant Scenery of the World brings together new and commissioned works by contemporary artists alongside archival material and contemporary botanical drawings from the collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Curious objects – contemporary art and palms

An exhibition currently at Bargain Spot in Edinburgh Objects from the Temperate Palm House shows a stunning range of work by eleven contemporary artists, displayed on or incorporating…

Haus Wittgenstein/Inverleith House

Haus Wittgenstein/Inverleith House Artist: Alan Johnston Date: 1995 Materials: Beeswax, charcoal and varnish on stone Ownership: On permanent loan from the artist Made to accompany the award-winning exhibition…

Sculptures in Inverleith Garden

Situated within the garden are several pieces of sculpture, many linked to the gallery at Inverleith House and its past use as the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art.

Bute Memorial Bench

Commissioned by Lady Bute as a memorial to her husband John, Sixth Marquess of Bute.

Rock Form (Porthcurno)

Rock Form (Porthcurno) reflects Hepworth’s on-going interest in the relationship between landscape and human interest.

Ascending Form (Gloria)

This is one of Hepworth’s earliest large-scale bronzes, featuring two diamond shapes, the larger sitting on top of the smaller, suggesting growth and upward movement.

Linnaeus Monument

The Linnaeus Monument was erected by John Hope a year after Linneaus’ death. The monument, built at Hope’s own expense, is a lasting testament to his regard for Linnaeus.