Book Launch: Dark Botany & The Hydrocene

Join us for an evening celebrating the launch of two insightful publications, 'Dark Botany: The Herbarium Tales' and 'The Hydrocene: Eco-Aesthetics in the Age of Water'.

Hear from Rowan Boyson from Kings College London, Justin Clemens from University of Melbourne and Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris from UNSW as they share their perspectives on these new works. Following that, attendees are invited to stay for refreshments.

Dark Botany: The Herbarium Tales is an edited volume that focuses on the estrangement of the Herbarium as the traditional repository of Enlightenment knowledge and Imperial desire. Each chapter in this volume is entangled with the darkly botanical, not only telling truths about the Herbarium’s dark histories and darker contemporary currents, but also training a microscope’s lens on the texture, movement, memory, compound structure, chemical emissions and rapid evolution of plants and languages.

The Hydrocene: Eco-Aesthetics in the Age of Water is a monograph by Dr Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, published by Routledge UK in the Environmental Humanities Series (2024). Bronwyn’s new book figures the Hydrocene as a disruptive, conceptual epoch and curatorial theory, emphasising water's pivotal role in the climate crisis and contemporary art. It traces wet ontological shifts in eco-aesthetics that are redefining our approach to water, and outlines a series of hydro-artistic methods relevant to creative engagements with watery bodies. Transcending anthropocentric, neo-colonial and environmentally destructive ways of thinking about water, the book argues for a return to the planetary notion of thinking with water.

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Supported by an ARC Linkage 2020-24.