AFTER STAINBRIDGE
This collection of work refers to the architect and geographer Frank Stainbridge (1776 –1860) who designed and built a wonderful greenhouse to house his collection of exotic plants brought back from expeditions to the tropics.
After the greenhouse was damaged in a storm and the plants perished he rebuilt the greenhouse but this time filled it with replicas of the plants so exquisitely executed that it was claimed it was impossible to tell the difference from the real thing. In 1841 a religious fanatic burnt down the greenhouse in the belief that this nature was false and against the hand of God.
Pioneers such as Stainbridge put forward a new idea of how nature could be. It could be manufactured to be beautiful, easily maintained and offered as a consumerable.
In this series, images of manufactured nature are viewed through ‘windows’ created from the patterns made by plastic food packaging. The idea is of nature removed and distorted by the artefacts of a modern lifestyle.