Manchester
School of Art
MA Show
2013
Fri 27 September —
Sun 13 October
10.00—16.00hrs
An exhibition of work
by postgraduate
students of —
- Architecture & Urbanism
- Art As Environment
- Design
- Design & Art Direction
- Filmmaking
- Fine Art
- Landscape Architecture
- Media Arts
- Photography
- Textiles
- Three Dimensional Design
- Visual Culture
Julian Harris
Botanical Studies
My work is an exploration of extreme image manipulation. I have taken images from the BBC News website and transformed them into botanical illustrations. Using a combination of Photoshop tools, I have altered images of war, famine, politics and occasional happiness, into representations of the components of medicinal plants. The initial aim of this manipulation is to reference medicinal plants that could treat ailments related to the news stories, however the therapy also acts in another way.
The benefit of the natural world's ability to soothe and calm our minds has been known for a long time, but even just a virtual representation of the natural world can have a positive impact on our mental ¬stability and rehabilitation, according to new research. By changing a form of potential information overload into something that can counteract it's affects I aim to reduce this overload brought upon ourselves with our hyper-connected lives.
The botanical illustrations were inspired by the hand coloured plates of the botanical journals of the 17 and 1800s. Researching these beautiful framed windows into the, then increasingly popular, world of botany, has inevitably led me to bring my illustrations together in the form of a book reminiscent of these works.
