Adaptation 2

An artwork by Katy and Rebecca Beinart. In the Victorian era, plant collectors brought back strange and rare plants from around the world. They transported the plants in a 'Wardian case', a glass travelling case that creates its own micro-climate. These plants were displayed as rare treasures, until they slowly adapted to their new environment. This work links to ideas of colonialism and collection of the 'foreign', and turns tables on this by using plants as a metaphor for the gradual environmental change that people enact as they migrate. The plant case contains plants that chosen for their relevance to the stories of people who told their stories to the artists, and over the entire period of the exhibition the panels of the case gradually open, allowing the plants to adapt to their environment and to each other. Thanks to Toby Olditch.