Under Pressure : Botanical Hauntings Exhibition

Under Pressure: Botanical Hauntings

Curated by Christine Dixie, Under Pressure: Botanical Hauntings is an exhibition inspired by the seminar series Plant Liveswhich took place earlier this year and was convened by Isabel Hofmeyr and Sarah Nuttall.
 

Using print (the transfer of one surface onto another) as a starting point, the six artists on this exhibition, respond to the ways that plant life, its presence and absence has haunted their practice and their lives. Professor Nuttall will open the exhibition.

The world over, plant specimens gathered for Linnean-inspired herbariums are ‘pressed’, that is, ‘put under pressure’ so that they lie flat in order to comply with standard herbarium sheet requirements. It could be said that they are ‘pressed’ into the service of a scientific, colonial, classifying system.

The prints on this exhibition have also been subjected to varying degrees of pressure as the matrix and paper move through the etching or lithographic press, the force of the pressure belying their fragile subject matter and final materially delicate form.

Ghostly traces of plants from stains or embossing at times rise through the surface of the paper of annotated herbarium sheets. These ghostly traces speak to a future absence, a prescient foreboding. Taping them down, describing and depicting them appears to be a direct response to an anxiety and a recognition that plants are under severe environmental pressure.

Isabel Hofmeyr is Professor Emeritus at Wits University; Sarah Nuttall is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at WiSER, Wits. Christine Dixie is an artist and a Senior Lecturer at Rhodes University. 

Please join us for the exhibition opening with Professor Sarah Nuttall

Saturday, 1^st November 2025

5pm

54 The Valley Road, Parktown, Johannesburg

Walkabout with the artists:

Sunday, 2^nd November 2025 from 12pm