Tom Hunter will show his new work ‘Invasive Species, Gunnera Tinctoria’, with Purdy Hicks Gallery as part of this years Photo London.
7th until the 17th of October 2020
I started making this series of images during Lockdown. Spending this time in isolation within nature I contemplated humankinds place in earths ecosystems. As a species we are facing a deadly virus which grows inside the human body threatening our very existence. Invasive species is a term given to plant and animal life which threatens indigenous or native species. In the U.K. invasive exotics have colonialised many native natural and urban habitats changing forever our world, bringing both beauty and destruction.
Gunnera tinctorial originates from South America and is a plant that dates back 150 million years and which creates Jurassic awnings, a place to contemplate nature, survival and our place within an invasion ecology. This triffid-like plant has escaped its natural environment, has migrated, it’s a super-sized survivalist that was here a long time before man and will likely be here a long time after we’re gone.
Any one species cannot occupy a majority of the ecosystem due to the presences of competitors, predators, and diseases and viruses. Invasive Species questions all species place on earth in the natural world at a time of climate change, the Anthropocene, and the covid 19 pandemic.