Caroline Rothwell’s Bloom Lab evolves from her recent digital project Infinite Herbarium.
Bloom Lab comprises Infinite Herbarium Morphosis six-video installation, along with companion works: three suspended sculptures, and paintings that have also drawn their forms from her hybrid digital archive.
Rothwell’s uncanny embodied forms feel familiar. The strange blooms hold a kind of bodily presence and suggest a human botanical connection. The sculptural blooms are held suspended and upside down in vases that reference a pitcher painted by Picasso, and 18th century botany that swings between curiosity and empire building.
Rothwell’s practice often responds to archival material in museums, public collections and journals, and here she takes primary research to a bold and innovative new digital artistic space.