Acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest botanical gardens, and set against the eastern slopes of Cape Town’s Table Mountain, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden has provided the title for the paintings of Gavin Jantjes known as the Kirstenbosch Series (2023). The gardens emphasise the cultivation of indigenous plants for all South Africans, so the implication …
Chris Ofili lives and works in Barbados and Trinidad. The photographed plant segments below are taken from his thrilling artworks currently on show at Victoria Miro, London.
Plant inspired book covers from the British Library’s dusty archives. Age denotes all works are now in the Public Domain. For more, see their Flickr photostream.
Read the poem, take the walk, look out for plants. The poem Where should we meet but in this shabby park Where the railings are missing and the branches black? Industrial pastoral, our circuit Of grass under ash, long standing water And unimportant sunsets flaring up Above the half-dismantled fair. Our place Of in-betweens, abandoned …
On the first floor of the V&A is a corridor full of stained glass. It illustrates the art of the glazier and glass painter from the middle of the 12th Century to the present day. Whole plants and plant motifs appear frequently in the detail. Creations found in the V&A must be an endless source of …
The South Asia section of the Victoria and Albert museum is awash with plant patterns. If you are looking for a large amount of inspiration in one place, or you just want to plagiarise – everything a few centuries too old to be in copyright – then head here. Textiles, paintings, sculpture and more hang inside huge …