Crown Coach Botanical

Abstract

The City of Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency commissioned “Crown Coach Botanical” for use in a planned public artwork and provided US $24,000 for its production. The series of twenty-eight ambrotype plates comprised a survey of the rich variety of plants clinging to the Crown Coach Brownfield, a polluted wasteland in downtown L.A. set for remediation. Following a solo exhibition at Two Rooms Gallery in 2008, John Hurrell wrote “these strange blurred and specked images are of plants …found in the Los Angeles region where she now lives. Looking at them is like going back in time a hundred and fifty years.” (Eyecontact 9/08). A full set of these photographs were acquired by the City of Los Angeles art collection. Several images from this series were included in my contribution to Altogether Elsewhere, a feature exhibition by curator Rob Tufnell at the Zoo Art Fair, 2009 alongside artists including Alighiero Boetti, Jim Lambie, Mungo Thomson, Gülsün Karamustafa, Mike Nelson and Richard Hughes.