Conflicted Seeds + Spirit

David Attenborough Building, Cambridge, 2016

This was the first showing of work by Ackroyd & Harvey in Cambridge and included a mixed media living artwork, a split screen film work, a large-scale wall text work and an existing sculptural work.

Eight trees species subject to global conservation programmes were the focus of this work which also drew attending to the heritage of the New Museums Site as the original Cambridge Botanic (or Physic) Garden from 1762 to 1846. Working with an extensive international network of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative partners and associates, seeds were collected. This was dependent on relationships being created with a network of over twenty organisations working globally, to secure seed stock and research fieldwork into local ecologies and threatened species. Collaborations with FFI’s Global Trees Programme, with Kew Gardens, and with Botanic Gardens Conservation International, were crucial to the success of the artwork. With the support and expertise of Cambridge University Botanic Garden, saplings were successfully nurtured and grown for the opening exhibition.

The Museum of Zoology houses nearly 14 tons of specimens held in alcohol, the so-called ‘spirit collection’. The artists spent many weeks researching the catalogues to find specimens that had a connection with each tree species or biome where the tree grows.

Fifteen ‘spirits’ were selected and photographed. Creatures, many of whom were collected at the turn of the 19th century and held in suspension, present compelling and arresting portraits at odds with the life force of the trees they once inhabited, alighted on, or scurried by. The work juxtaposes and explores the preservation of the museum’s historical specimens with the growing dynamics of contemporary field conservation and protection of biodiversity.

The legacy of this project has seen one tree from each species being taken into permanent collection of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. A dedicated website shows the interconnection and complexity of stories that surround conservation on this scale: www.conflictedseeds.com