Saturday 8 July, 2-4pm
Living Table: Flora is an event about our relationship with plants. The event will present the research and practice of environmentalist Dr Helena Simmons and artists Amanda Thomson, and Susanne Nørregård Nielsen. Together we will collectively prepare a meal together using flora collected from the art centre’s grounds and gardens. The presentations will include different perspectives on power, landscape, identity, and the human relationship to the natural environment rooted in current societal issues such as the environmental crisis, food insecurity, and socio-economic disparity.
“The term Flora usually refers to the natural vegetation of a particular geographic region or a scientific work that catalogues such vegetation. These meanings have evolved from a metonymy of the Roman goddess Flora…”
Dominik Berrens
Appetiser
- Viola tea sandwiches
- Nasturtium poppers with cheese
Main
- Spring rolls with creamy peanut and ginger dipping sauce
- Vegetable ceviche with flowers
Dessert
- Lemon parfait with flowers
- Honey and lavender ice cream
Drinks
- Water with flower iced cubes
- Edible flower lemon jell-O shots
Living Table is a project that invites people to share food and conversations about food. Monthly events will create opportunities for discussion, learning, cooking, eating, and growing.
Led by the G.R.E.E.N. Artist in Residence Désirée Coral Guerra, Living Table is inspired by the life that grows around a table: from the life of insects that pollinate crops to the cultural and political life made manifest in recipes, traditions, and dinner table habits; from micro-organisms to human-migration.
Book Tickets
Guest Speakers
Dr Helena Simmons has an academic and research background, having completed a Botany B.Sc. (Hons) and a PhD at Glasgow University. Plants are the medium that can provide better biodiversity and climate outcomes, improve mental health and are needed to sustain ourselves, so after moving away from lab based research, Helena was keen to share her passion about plants via education and community engagement, working with volunteers in community gardens and with school groups. Plants are the foundations upon which all else rests.
Amanda Thomson is a writer and visual artist who lives and works in Strathspey and Glasgow and lectures at the Glasgow School of Art. She’s written for BBC Radio 3 and 4 and her essays are in several anthologies including Antlers of Water, writing on the nature and environment of Scotland and Gifts of Gravity and Light, A Nature Almanac for the 21st Century. She’s published three books: A Scots Dictionary of Nature (Saraband Books); microbursts, a collaboration with Elizabeth Reeder (Prototype); and most recently, Belonging, Natural Histories of Place, Identity and Home (Canongate). She’s a regular contributor to the Guardian newspaper’s Country Diary. She was a commissioned artist for the Edinburgh Art Festival in 2022. Boundary Layers, a dual-screen filmwork and spoken-word essay about nature’s reclamation of the former steelworks at Ravenscraig, Motherwell, is part of A Fragile Correspondence, Scotland’s collateral exhibition for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023.
Susanne Nørregård Nielsen is a Scottish-based Danish artist. Susanne is interested in illuminating art works central to the 20th century canon, to provoke new thinking on the impact of artists practice using feminine gendered materiality. Most current work investigates the influence of textiles on early 20th century visual art, in particular abstract painting with a focus on Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s practice. Susanne originally trained as a screen-printer in Copenhagen, before studying printmaking and painting at the Art Academy (P.W.S.S.P.) in Poznan, Poland. After two years she went on to study in the Painting and Printmaking Department at Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 1998. Susanne is a lecturer in the Painting and Printmaking Department of The Glasgow School of Art.