Ethnobotany in the Supermarket Ecosystem
Explore our relationship with plants in an interactive workshop. As humans, we rely on plants. Yet the relationship between humans and plants is strained by current food systems. Artist Andrew Merritt (Something & Son) and ethnobotanist Dr Sarah Edwards lead this workshop.
With Andrew and Sarah, discover historical and contemporary uses of plants in medicine and folklore. The workshop includes a walk around the gallery woodland and an exploration of Andrew’s sculpture, Supermarket Display. You’ll uncover unexpected stories of humans and plants – for example, which plants were once believed to protect houses from lightning and repel witches.
This event is free to attend, though booking is required.
The event takes place outdoors, so please dress accordingly.
About Andrew Merritt
Andrew Merritt’s work explores social and environmental issues via everyday scenarios criss-crossing the boundaries between the visual arts, architecture and activism. Through permanent installations, functional sculptures and public performances, projects provide a framework or foundation for communities and ecologies to build upon. Works mimic the everyday to act as familiar starting point and then take the subject into new realms. Andrew is one half of the artist duo Something & Son.
Andrew’s sculpture, Supermarket Display, is part of the Cultural Reforesting exhibition.
About Dr Sarah Edwards
Dr Sarah Edwards, author of The Ethnobotanical, is an ethnobotanist at the University of Oxford, where she teaches Ethnobiology and Biological Conservation and manages plant records for the Botanic Garden & Arboretum. She began her career at Kew Gardens, where she worked for over a decade. She has collaborated with First Nations communities in Australia to help conserve traditional plant knowledge and has worked with artists on Richmond upon Thames’s Cultural Reforesting programme. Sarah also serves on the Board of the British Herbal Medicine Association.
