Lynne Howarth-Gladston – författare

This lavishly-illustrated book re-assesses the work of the nineteenth-century botanical painter Marianne North (1830-1890) and the purpose-built gallery that houses her paintings at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Lynne Howarth-Gladston, a trained botanical illustrator and scholar, re-examines North’s working methods, which extend beyond those of conventional botanical illustration, and discusses North’s painterly techniques, in addition to her use of photography as a possible aid to her extraordinarily prolific output. Marianne North: A Victorian Painter for the 21st Century situates North both as an unconventional botanical painter and as a technically progressive artist who melded differing stylistic approaches, techniques and media from both scientific and aesthetic perspectives. The study presents North as a progressive, multi-faceted individual who was rooted in the complex circumstances of her own time. Yet it also reveals how her legacy continues to resonate with the concerns of the present day, such as contemporary intersections between art and science, artistic uses of multi-media, feminism, and climate change. Drawing on North’s travel writing as well as her visual record, the book offers a unique view of one of the most intriguing figures in the history of botanical art.

This is the first edited collection to critically address in its entirety questions related to the displaying of Chinese contemporary art. It includes chapters by scholars and cultural workers from diverse backgrounds involved in the interpretation of artistic as well as curatorial discourses and practices. Each of those chapters gives a detailed account of a particular, socio-culturally informed, approach to the making and showing of Chinese art - including in relation to queer identities, transculturality, the use of social media, artivism, social engagement, institutional critique, and neo-Confucian aesthetics. Together they present a vital intervention with established curatorship amidst the intensely interconnected and increasingly multi-polar cultural conditionalities of early 21st-century contemporaneity.