In many galleries, the practice of rotating artwork ensures that light-sensitive works, such as drawings and prints on paper, are not on view for too long.

The Botanical Art Gallery invites you to share the space with curator Dr Michele Rodda, as he turns the pages on some of the exhibited books on display for Flower Obsession: Plant Collecting in East Asia, 1600s - 1900s.

Venue: Botanical Art Gallery [Gallop Extension]

Date: 15 July 2022

Time: 11am – 12pm

No registration is required.

Notes on the exhibition
This is the first exhibition at the Botanical Art Gallery to feature artworks from two important overseas institutions: Higashiyama Botanical Gardens and the private Soukaen Bunko (Nagoya, Japan).

The exhibition is divided between two rooms. The displays in the first room showcase popular flowers that have been, for centuries, ubiquitous in the arts and plant collecting traditions of East Asia and beyond. The drawings and prints in these showcases are an invaluable archive of the East Asian love of flowers, and are a permanent record of plants that have been cultivated, selected, exhibited and traded.

The second room reflects the boom of plant exhibitions and competitions that became popular in Japan at the same time as the development of botany and plant illustration in the early to mid-1800s. Numerous books were produced as a permanent record of the best plants that were being displayed. These plants often had unusual form or variegated leaves which were particularly coveted among Japanese collectors.

About the curator
Dr Michele Rodda is a taxonomist at the Singapore Botanic Gardens, who specialises in the Apocynaceae (the frangipani family) of Southeast Asia and neighbouring regions. He has also been studying the historic collections of botanical art in the Garden’s archives. He is the curator of exhibitions at the Garden’s Botanical Art Gallery, and he has written the book Tropical Plants in Focus: Botanical Illustration at the Singapore Botanic Gardens (2021).

For more information about the exhibition, visit Flower Obsession: Plant Collecting in East Asia, 1600s–1900s.