John Royle’s Barrow
By
Alice Forward
2024
- Installation Art
- Sculpture
- Mixed Media
- Environment & Sustainability
- Social & Political
- Heritage & Archives
- Invasive Aliens
- Artandecology
- Plant History
- Garden
- Installation
- Nature
- Sculpture
Dimensions
Dimensions: 2Mx1Mx.6M, time-based, 5 days.
Short&Forward collaboration, commissioned for the En Route exhibition in Mecklenberg Garden 2024. Iron wheelbarrow, Himalayan balsam, gilded and pressed, water.
John Forbes Royle was employed by the Dutch East India Company to plant hunt for the lucrative pharmaceutical and horticultural markets. Royle introduced Himalayan or Indian balsam to the royal Botanic Gardens at Kew around 1838. It thrived beyond anyone’s expectations, later inspiring John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids.
