The Guerilla Science Committee for proposing this challenge to us and selecting our project for the NUI Galway Science Festival. We would like to especially thank Ann Lyons and Sarah Knight for their unfailing support and for continuously making the impossible possible!!!
Rob D'Eath - for advise, support and for providing us with a beautiful working space in Sliding Rock ceramics studio in Spiddal.
Katharine West, Zoë Popper - our thesis supervisors, for their advise and support.
John Butler - for invaluable help in the ceramics studio including non-stop tireless kiln firings to produce over 400 tiles. But most importantly for all the positive encouragement particularly in times when nerves were fraying! You are our Zen-Master!!!
Claire McLaughlin - for all your moral support and decal demonstration!
Laura O'Hagan - for incredible Tec7 advice!
Jim Earley and Michael Carr - for their patience and help with installing the tiles around campus
Nuala Ni Fhlathuin and Carla Kennedy - for volunteering in tile-making and useful artistic advise
Noel Arrigan - for ensuring to make the paint stick to the mounting boards and hands-on paint-rolling!
Olivier Leroux - for constructive criticism and supplying Belgian chocolate
Nollaig Coughlan and Ari Bowe Kumbura Gedasa - for bravely allowing us to graffiti their house and refueling us with spicy SriLankan Curries!!!
David Dempsey - for providing a blank canvas wall in Woodquay and super-useful cardboard tubes!
and many many more - for sharing links, assisting in beer drinking after hours of hard work and being enthusiastic.
We can't list everyone but thank you all for your help!
About the Artist
Veronika Straberger is a ceramic installation artist who works with clay in an interactive, multidimensional way to create mixed media events.
'In my work I aim to engage the viewer in an active way, encouraging exploration and discovery using installation and performance art. I use clay as a transforming body making use of its elastic, versatile qualities. I frequently work with mixed media and was very excited about the prospect of working with a botanist, bringing plant-life back to the extracted clay soil, gone sterile in the ceramics studio. I immediately latched on to the project proposed by Anna Pielach looking at the ingenious ways of hemiparasitic plants in controlling monocultures and promoting diversity.'
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About the Scientist
Anna Pielach is a botanist and landscape architect fascinated by plants, their ecology and how they can be used to play with diamond knives and microscopes.
‘My background is in landscape architecture and pursuing a PhD in botany was a natural progression as I always focused on choosing the right plants and let others calculate the loads. I have experience in artistic work for project visualization, however I have never tried abstract ways of expressing ideas. There is endless beauty to be found in plants and endless ways to explain their biology in a creative way. This project is an exciting opportunity to translate science into the more universal language of art. Veronika is a very creative and motivated person and it has been a great pleasure to learn about clay from her.'
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LATCH ON! Artistic Concept
Based on the life and characteristics of hemiparasitic plants ‘Latch On’ aims to provoke and challenge by occupying public spaces. Using colorful, odd-shaped tiles and window adhesives this street-installation disrupts the usual, monotonous and regular and introduces the public to an unusual display of microscopic images entering our macroscopic world.
Without a planning permission hemiparasites invade roots of common, vigorous grasses and in doing so enrich meadows with delicate herbs and rare endangered species. Mimicking the behavior of haustoria, bold public tile and window displays latch on to buildings, cling to lamp-posts and lurk around street-corners, challenging the viewer to react.
As the usefulness and importance of Hemiparasites is under hot debate, so the street installation is opening a discourse as to the value and status of public street art versus a need for its control. The challenge is now posed to the visitor to enter into a debate as to the aesthetic and moral value of this project.
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Haustorium is the underground connection point where a root of a hemiparasite clasps around a host root. Sections of haustoria (10µm thin) were stained and photographed under the microscope. The resulting images were transferred onto tiles.
Hemiparasitic plants such as yellow rattle (Rhinathus minor) have been successfully used in meadow biodiversity restoration. While hemiparasites are extremely useful in that sense, they are not welcome by farmers. They are seen as ‘weeds’ and encourage more ‘weeds’ where only grass is desirable. This provokes questions about management for biodiversity and productivity in grassland ecosystems.
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