Eggebert & Gould
Transplantation
Biographies
Cambridge University Botanical Gardens

In the Botanic Garden
Anne Eggebert and Polly Gould were artists-in-residence at Cambridge University Botanic Garden from January to May 2001. This botanic collection, begun over 150 years ago, incorporates widely varying geographic sources into the homogenised whole of a landscaped garden. Eggebert-and- Gould’s work has evolved in response to the Garden, drawing upon the place, found objects and the expertise of the Garden staff.
Typical Tulip

Installation: Television with Alpines

Miniaturised and condensed, we see here an Alpine range that spans the world. Time-lapse and animation are used to combine fragments of botanical images from the 16th, 18th and 21st centuries into a hybrid illustration charting the changes in taste and crossing of cultures that have determined the classification of this ‘natural’ thing.



In collaboration with Joanna Walker of CUMIS.


Hortus Inconclusus

Sonic Panorama with Radar

This work functions as a sonic map of the Garden. It describes the porous boundary of a garden in the urban environment, where sounds of nature combine with urban noise; elements beyond normal perception are heard, like radar echoes of tree roots and the vibrations of forks at work.



In collaboration with Tim Gould.

With thanks to Utsi Electronics.


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Typical Tulip

Aeroplane and Flower Vase

Installation: Television with Cacti

This video imitates 16th century Dutch flower painting in which there are an unseasonal coincidence of blooms. In the video the flowers appear according to their months of flowering. Global commerce provides unseasonal abundance for the privileged West. Illusion and artifice are questioned in the framing of this work: from the trompe l’oeil (paintings in which objects have the illusion of reality) of the window in the video; to the video image of the wall of the artists’ studio; to the edge of the TV screen set in the artifice of a desert habitat; framed by the glasshouse; built in a landscaped garden.




In collaboration with Joanna Walker of CUMIS
Aeroplane with Flower Vase
Aeroplane with Flower Vase work in progress

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Clip from Aeroplane with Flower Vase
Horticulture

Photo Installation

Cycles of growth and decay permeate the continual task of horticultural maintenance. Plant labels picturing the labour of staff are installed in the beds around the garden, pin-pointing the moments where nature meets culture in the act of gardening
Horticulture
Green and Pleasant

Drawing: Neverbend (turf lifting iron) with Colonial Bent (grass)

The ubiquitous green lawn was inspired by the picturesque in painting, it was then contrived into reality in the landscape gardens of Capability Brown, there to be naturalised as typically ‘English’, and subsequently exported to the Colonies. Thus ‘the lawn’ functioned as a colonising aesthetic, signifying a little bit of England’s green and pleasant land in far-flung territories.
Genetic Landscape

Drawing: DNA Gel with Pressed Flowers

Different eras promise access to knowledge and power through different total projects; the sixteenth century aimed to collect every type of plant in the space of one garden; the contemporary goal is to complete a map of the human genome. ‘Knowing the world’ has shifted from the global scale of mapping territories, to the microscopic scale of mapping genetic codes.
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