San Mei Gallery presents The Herbarium’s Shadow, the first solo exhibition by artist and researcher Matthew Beach. Following the latest government roadmap out of lockdown, the exhibition will open online from 7 April with a small series of virtual events and then will open physically to the public from 15 April.

Embedded within discourses around materiality, Matthew Beach's practice explores the entanglements between place, the photographic, and care in more-than-human worlds. The exhibition is the culmination of Matthew Beach’s research from his time on the LABVERDE residency programme in Brazil’s Amazon forest during the summer of 2019. During the residency, Matthew Beach researched the relations between humans and domestic tropical plants, examining the historical and contemporary practice of botany. The exhibition reflects on the formation of these human-plant relations via an immersive display of his research, which seeks to imagine new possibilities of co-living and interrelation with plants.

The Herbarium’s Shadow is an unusual and organic exhibition that will evolve over the course of its duration, thanks to the fast-growing plant and the workshops around it. Drawing from contemporary thought at the intersection between ecological philosophy and environmental geography, the exhibition will host a public conversation between Matthew Beach and geographer Anna Lawrence (PhD Candidate, Cambridge University), alongside educational projects in partnership with Cullinan Studios, CHIPS and Myatt’s Field Park. 

Matthew Beach is an artist and researcher based in London, UK. Recent exhibitions include The Making of Landscape at Galerie Duchomp, Yvetot, and Prospect for the More-Than-Human at Regency Townhouse, Brighton, and his work has been screened at The Showroom, London and Bloomsbury Theatre, London. Matthew Beach is currently a Teaching and Research Fellow in Printmaking at City and Guilds of London Art School; and a PhD candidate in the School of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London, researching historical and contemporary practices of producing and consuming gelatine and collagen peptides. He received his MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2017), and he is an alumnus of LABVERDE (2019) and the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art (2016). 

Installation Views

Editions

Events

We have organised a number of events alongside The Herbarium’s Shadow, please follow the links to find out more. Please note that due to covid restrictions booking is essential for all events.

Tea Workshop with Olha Pryymak (Online)

Saturday 10 April, 2-5pm

Harold Offeh: Black Bodies in the Landscape (Talk/Screening)

Talk: 15 April, 6.30-7.30pm
Screening: 12-18 April

Matthew Beach in conversation with Anna Lawrence (Online)

Thursday 22 April, 4.30–6pm

Olha Pryymak Tea Workshops

Saturday 24 April, 12–3pm

It’s Freezing in LA! Virtual Pub Quiz

Friday 30 April, 6–7.30pm

Plant Pot Painting

Saturday 15 May, 12-3pm

Plant Swap

Saturday 15 May, 1–6pm

Video

Matthew Beach in conversation with IFLA!

Matthew Beach discusses his exhibition The Herbarium's Shadow with environmental magazine It’s Freezing in LA!

3D Virtual Tour

Reading List

We have compiled a reading list in collaboration with Matthew Beach expanding on the exhibitions themes of ecology and plant-human relations

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Penguin, 2020

Decolonizing Nature, Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology, T. J. Demos, Stenberg press, 2016

Compost Politics: Experimenting with Togetherness in Vermicomposting, Sebastian Abrahamsson and Filippo Bertoni, Environmental Humanities, 2014

Hyperobjects, Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, by Timothy Morton, University of Minnesota Press, 2013

Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren, Little Brown Book Group, 2020

Staying with the Trouble, Making Kin in the Chthulucene, by Donna J. Haraway, Duke University Press, 2016

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Princeton University Press, 2015

Hybrid Geographies: Natures Cultures Spaces, by Sarah Whatmore, SAGE Publications, 2002