Atlantic Botanic

In the film Atlantic Botanic (2007)… which is exhibited as both a two-channel film and two separate films, Lucas shows footage of members of the South London Botanical Institute in Herne Hill, a middle-class enclave of South London, alongside that of a market trader in Brixton Market, an area just nearby but more culturally and economically mixed. The juxtaposition reveals similarities in the patterns of their days (work, lunch, chat, work) as well as visual analogies – a shot of a middle-aged botanist looking through a circular magnifying glass recalls one of a trader washing his knife in the circular aperture of a plastic bucket. The obvious contrasts – class, age, education – open up into a choreography of action and interaction all hinged on a specialist knowledge of plant culture that each set of protagonists contain and display, in their own way. Gradually, both botanists and traders seem ordinary and extraordinary in their remarkably amplified knowledge of and attention to the keenly mundane subject of plants, fruit and vegetables. And, at the same time, the visually articulated similarities make it clear we are watching a film, an aestheticisation of real life, with Lucas animating their absorption – observing their observation, with her own specialist tool.- Melissa Gronlund