Environmental Aesthetics researcher and author, Lecturer
Prudence Gibson
Background
Prudence Gibson is an author and academic at the School of Art and Design, University of NSW, Sydney. She is Lead Investigator of an Australian Research Council grant in partnership with Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens Herbarium. Her latest book is The Plant Thieves (NewSouth Books 2023) which chases decolonial and psychedelic stories of plants and people of the Sydney herbarium. Other recent books are The Plant Contract (Brill Rodopi 2018), Janet Laurence: The Pharmacy of Plants (NewSouth Books 2015). She has contributed chapters to books for fellow plant studies scholars Michael Marder, Giovanni Aloi, Monica Gagliano and Catriona Sandilands. Her latest theoretical concept is Dark Botany.
How does your work engage and consider the environment, different sites and ecologies?
My plant studies research engages with plant science, climate change and issues surrounding the herbaria collections of the world.
Experience with this Country/place and the thoughts it has evoked in you?
Nielsen Park is a site of colonial and pre-colonial collision. A haven, a utopia, its beauty is shadowed by the violence to plants and Indigenous peoples of the area.
Experiences with intertidal areas, the ocean and connections you've forged with country.
Algae, specifically crayweed, is vegetal matter that continuously reminds me of the evolution of ocean plants as they moved onto land.
What holds particular significance for you in/about Neilsen Park country and Bottle and Glass Point?
This place has significance as a site of colonial arrival and attack. Its local vegetation persists due to its local care. But it is also highly populated by weekend visitors and Australia Day is difficult to witness, as revelers seem unaware of the insensitivity of celebrating a period of violent extractivism and harm.
How do you create spaces for contemporary leadership, learning and collaboration with other people and the environment?
Collaboration does two things. It shines a mirror on my own concepts and theorising of art and ecology. It also ensures that I have access to colleagues and new friends via projects of reciprocity and learning.
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