Take Root
Alicja Patanowska’s Plantation installation at London’s Fleet Street Quarter (image: Alka Murat).
Alicja Patanowska’s Plantation installation looks like a science experiment. Lining a wall of an office building which forms part of London’s Fleet Street Quarter are shelves holding 200 glass containers growing hydroponic plants, but under closer inspection these are no laboratory beakers: wine glasses, champagne flutes and tumblers cradle their exposed roots.
Patanowska started picking up abandoned glasses she found littering the streets of London while she was studying fine art at the Royal College of Art in 2014. “I already had a few friends who were scavengers, like people who collect food from bins,” Patanowska says, which inspired her to collect the glasses on her desk and search for a new use for them. “I really love nature and I was living in Brixton without a garden, so straight away I was thinking: what can I grow in this glass?”
Half of the porcelain components exhibited are new experimental shapes (image: Alka Murat).
To transform the glasses into effective vehicles for plant life, Patanowska created porcelain components which sit at the top of the glass like a lid, but feature holes in the bottom through which roots can dangle to reach the water below. “I was checking what kind of glasses are on the market, what plants look good in a glass, and what [porcelain] shapes are best in terms of design, and it gave me a really cool kind of dictionary,” she says. Larger plants such as onion bulbs, for example, can sit in components with one large hole in the bottom that gathers their roots together like a tail, making them easier to remove and plant elsewhere. Meanwhile, smaller plants such as beans prefer components dotted with little holes that protect them from falling into the water and give their roots a voluminous hairstyle.
Half of the components exhibited at Fleet Street Quarter are entirely new experiments, with some featuring thin mouths shaped like baby bottles while others have roots trailing through lopsided cone shapes. These unusual forms are contrasted against the components that Patanowska sells as products, which are designed to fit as many standard glasses as possible using uniform shapes that resemble egg-cups and funnels. “It is very important that the product and the art project have the same name, Plantation, because I truly believe that these boundaries between art and design blur,” Patanowska says. At the end of the exhibition, members of the public are invited to take the plants home for free, a process which avoids waste and fluidly turns the project from an art installation back into household objects.
Patanowska also sells the porcelain components as products, using standardised shapes which fit as many glasses as possible (image: Alka Murat).
By using porcelain, which is one of the most luxurious types of clay, Patanowska aimed to challenge perceptions of both the abandoned glasses and the plants themselves. “My grandparents were farmers, and they taught me to respect all resources and respect every object which we have,” Patanowska says. By using Plantation, some food waste can be given a new life: the green sprouts of garlic bulbs, for example, taste like asparagus with a hint of garlic, while avocado pits produce leaves with a subtle aniseed flavour. Other plants simply reveal unexpected beauty — potatoes, Patanowska points out, originally arrived in Europe as ornamental plants. “King Louis XVI grew them in his garden,” she says. “They have beautiful white flowers.”
Words Helen Gonzalez Brown