The Understory II
The Understory II is a multidisciplinary project working across portraiture, landscape, and still life. It explores relationships between people and the natural world, and the historical legacies that continue to shape how environments are formed and valued. At its core is a desire to acknowledge the histories embedded in horticulture while looking toward a more diverse and inclusive future.
The project reflects on botany’s entanglement with colonial histories, where plants were used as tools of economic expansion and cultural power. They functioned not only as a living plants, but as resources and symbols tied to the empire.
The royal parkland at Hampton Court serves as a key site within the work. The Long Water, commissioned by Charles II in 1662, is steeped in imperial symbolism. These landscapes are treated as shifting spaces where history and possibility intersect. By working within them, the project recognises inherited horticultural practices while questioning the narratives they sustain.
Still-life images combine sculptural and organic forms, drawing on the visual language of Dutch still-life painting once used to celebrate colonial wealth. The uneven brushstrokes disrupt expectations of precision, unsettling the genre, and pointing to histories shaped by omission and selective storytelling.
The portraits explore women’s relationships with the natural world, recognising their growing role in environmental thinking and action. Presented as a collective rather than as individuals, the figures reflect diversity in age and culture, positioning women not only as those affected by climate change but as active agents in environmental justice.
The narrative moves between what has been inherited and what remains possible. Some images dwell on traces of the past; others suggest moments of change. The past is approached not as something fixed, but as a landscape that can be revisited and reshaped.
