Camden Arts Centre
The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and the Cosmic Tree
April 17 – June 21, 2020
Preview: 16 April, 6:30 – 8:30pm
In spring 2020, Camden Arts Centre will present The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and the Cosmic Tree - a major thematic group exhibition that investigates the significance of the plant kingdom to human life, consciousness and spirituality, across cultures and through time.
Bringing together the work of over 50 artists and spanning more than 500 years, The Botanical Mind delves into the mysterious world of plant intelligence, bringing together surrealist, modernist and contemporary works alongside historical and ethnographic artefacts, textiles and manuscripts. Extending across all of Camden Arts Centre’s gallery spaces and accompanied by a diverse programme of public talks, screenings and live events, this will be one of the Centre’s most ambitious exhibitions to date.
The extraordinary range of works in the exhibition revolve around the concept of the plant kingdom as an Axis Mundi or Cosmic Tree: a universal archetype that appears in the symbolism and mythologies of cultures globally, connecting the human condition to the living world through the image of the plant. Running through the exhibition is a recurring motif of the intrinsic relationship between patterns and music, which draws on the fractal and spiral geometries of plant forms and flowers, as well as the visions induced by mind-manifesting plant medicines. These abstract geometries are often thought of as blueprints for the natural world and reveal an encoded intelligence in the plant kingdom.
The Botanical Mind presents modern and contemporary art that explores the relationships between music and geometric abstraction, seen in the work of artists including Eileen Agar, Channa Horwitz and Yves Laloy; alongside ideas of animism and spiritualism in the practices of outsider, surrealist and modernist artists, such as Anna Zemankova, Charles Filiger, Adolf Wölfli, Charles Burchfield, Remedios Varo, Henri Michaux, Annie Albers, Wolfgang Paalen, Ithell Colqhoun, and Josef Albers. The exhibition also presents examples of art and literature that emerged concurrent with the psychedelic cultural revolution of the 1960s, with works by Bruce Conner, William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin; and conveys the histories and philosophical positions of the project through to the present day, through the work of international contemporary artists including Kerstin Brätsch, Carol Bove, Andrea Büttner, Simon Ling, Philip Taaffe, Cerith Wyn Evans, Adam Chodzko, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, and Alexander Tovborg. The Botanical Mind also sees the return of several artists who have previously shown at Camden Arts Centre, whose visionary practices delve deeply into the nature and mysteries of life - including Hilma Af Klint, Matt Mullican, Joachim Koester and Giorgio Griffa.
The current environmental crisis demands urgent solutions that are grounded in coalition: not just amongst the world’s nations, but between humans and the non-human entities we share the world with. Many indigenous communities in the Amazon rainforest have co-existed harmoniously with their environments for millennia; through alliance with the forest itself and through a way of life that is grounded in ancestral wisdom traditions, ethics and practical knowledge. The Botanical Mind gives a platform to the Yawanawa people of the Amazon rainforest, who place the spiritual significance of plants at the core of their cosmology. Artists from the community will create a major new commission in collaboration with indigenist artist Delfina Muñoz de Toro in Camden Arts Centre: a new large-scale wall painting, derived from their sacred geometries - kene [designs] - that traditionally take form as paint applied directly to the body or as intricate bead work. The exhibition will also include a group of Icaros - traditional textiles made by the Shipibo-Conibo people, indigenous to the Peruvian lowlands of the Amazon, which take the form of mandala-like, labyrinthine abstractions that are central to plant and music-based healing rituals.
A fully illustrated 300-page catalogue will supplement the exhibition, featuring rare images and documents including the Psalterium Cantuariense depicting Christ amongst a group of giant mushrooms; illuminations by Christian mystic Hildegard Von Bingen; Assyrian reliefs of the cosmic tree, 865BC-860BC; Mayan calendars; Incan cosmological diagrams and contributions from leading voices in fields pertinent to the exhibition.
The public programme will coincide with the lunar cycle and expand on the key themes explored in the exhibition; and will include a live event involving music and storytelling with the Yawanawa community. Details to follow.
The exhibition is curated by Gina Buenfeld and Martin Clark.
Notes to editors
For further information, interviews and images please contact:
Sam Talbot, sam@sam-talbot.com // +44 (0) 772 5184 630
Mary Doherty mary@sam-talbot.com // +44 (0) 771 6701 499
Camden Arts Centre
Camden Arts Centre is a place for world-class contemporary art exhibitions and education. Situated in Hampstead, North London, we are a charity that champions excellence in the arts and culture, providing opportunities for our local, national and international audiences to experience artworks and artefacts of the most extraordinary kind. Founded by artists in 1965, the Centre continues to be a space for the most vital and diverse mix of practices and ideas and is dedicated to supporting artists at every stage of their careers.