Rachel Pimm
Through 2020 we worked with artist, Rachel Pimm. During their residency, Rachel explored the garden as a site for artistic practice, research and remote communal activity.
Rachel has been working remotely, connecting to The White House’s Beacon Garden* and our communities through sharing regular conversations; documenting foraging, growing and cooking processes; and undertaking research into historical and current records of plants for material, medicinal, herbal and scientific use, especially when tasted through the mouth, or applied to or worn on the skin.
Through foraging, growing for food and health, as well as though remote correspondence, Rachel is exploring the interconnected and seasonal relationship between earth, minerals, and biological life.
Rachel Pimm searching for Piper nigrum, black pepper plant at the Skygarden, Canary Wharf (Photo by Ruth Bridget Brennan)
In a time when we have become isolated from one another and access to green space has been restricted; our connection to plants, nutrition and medicine as well as the communal acts of producing, sharing, making, touching and eating become more fundamental and have the potential to play an increasing role in helping us understand wider systems affecting our local and global communities.
The Garden of The Net-work
Through 2020 and into 2021, Rachel Pimm connected with a group of Becontree local residents, discussing homegrown medicine and the concept of a communal apothecary garden.
Participants shared regular mail with medicinal plants to grow at home; each with seeds, instructions, remedy recipes and research on themes of clinical research, skincare, pain relief, anti-virals, and breathing easy.
See below for archived copies of correspondence
MAIL 1 : The Garden of the Net-work
Theme: CLINICAL RESEARCH
Seeds: EPHEDRA / TOBACCO [chosen for their place in the current world of clinical research trials]
DOWNLOAD LETTER
Ephedra sinica is a plant amphetamine which has been used for millennia, though since the 1880s and into the 70s these have been synthesised to make amphetamines. It is also sold dried as a herbal supplement, especially common in Traditional Chinese Medicine, good for the lungs,
Nicotiana tabacum is, as it sounds, tobacco. It's both ancient and super new. Nicotine plants were the earliest GM plant models (c.1983) for research in biochemistry and molecular biology - they are used to grow hybrid genetics for vaccines.
Flax mail posted to Dave, The White House caretaker by Rachel Pimm, 7.04.2020
FLAX
Rachel commenced her residency with the dispersed planting of Flax, the raw fibre that produces linen. Flax is currently being grown at The White House garden and remotely across other gardens.
Flax is traditionally found in physic gardens for dressing both bodies and wounds. It is grown for bandages and poultices as well as everyday breathable fabrics to wear and dress the home.
The Garden of The Net-work, remote growing - young flax
Adapted from the illuminated frontispiece of The Garden of Cyrus, a 1658 book by Thomas Browne, on ancient and sacred geometries, and patterns of planting networks
About Rachel Pimm
Rachel Pimm (b. Harare, 1984, lives in London) is a research based artist, working in conversations, text, photography, video and sculpture to explore environments and their materialities, histories and politics often from the view point of the things themselves. They are interested in queer, feminist and post-colonial materialisms, natural histories and resource extraction, and the potential of surfaces and matter to transform. Their recent work has been included in programmes including the Whitechapel Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Science Gallery London, Chisenhale Gallery (all London 2014-2019) as well as internationally across Europe and the USA. Recent residencies include Whitechapel Gallery writer in residence, Loughborough University Chemical Engineering and Gurdon institute of Genetics at Cambridge University.
*The White House’s Beacon Garden was conceived and developed by They Are Here during a White House residency between 2017-2019. They Are Here were commissioned to transform the former car park behind The White House into a community garden. The site acts as both a garden and artwork.