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Shot in London in March 2024 as a way to practise my photography with tropical plants, these initial photographs of Kew Gardens Palm House will be complemented by a series pf photographs made with Dominica’s Botanic Gardens. This collection of photographs will also draw on a developing Global Black Geographies auto-ethnographic project I am committing to with the locale of Kings Hill Dominica and Dominica’s own respective Botanic Gardens.
I am interested in exploring King’s Hill due to my unexplored familial connections to the locale. King’s Hill is my mother's former home before she migrated to the U.K. It is also currently a home to extended family who remain to live on the island. The creation of a geographic practice-based body of work is the primary aim of this project, which I intend to freely share with archives/libraries in Dominica and the U.K.
Comprised by 40 acres of former sugar cane plantation fields to the east of Roseau, Dominica’s Botanic Gardens were set up by a series of British and Kew Gardens based curators who travelled to the island in the 1890s to orientate the gardens towards economical and experimental activities through the cultivation various ornamental plants, whose origins spread across the globe. My practice-related approach to this auto-ethnographic body of work will see me explore framing ideas of home, heritage and belonging through a visual attendance to Dominica’s natural and man-made landscapes.
