EDITED BY CARLOS LEHNEBACH, CLAIRE REGNAULT, REBECCA RICE, ISAAC TE AWA AND RACHEL YATES

THE MAGNIFICENT PLANT WORLD OF AOTEAROA IN ART AND OBJECT

A glorious big book that mines Te Papa’s collections to explore and expand upon the way we think about our botanical world and its cultural imprint is to be published by Te Papa Press in November. A true treasure, Flora: Celebrating our Botanical World features over 400 selections by an expert, cross-disciplinary museum curatorial team that range from botanical specimens and art to photography, furniture, jewellery, tivaevae, applied art, textiles, stamps and more.

Flora’s twelve essays provide a deeper contextual understanding of different topics, including the unique characteristics of New Zealand flora as well as how artists and cultures have used flora as a motif and a subject over time.

The book took three years to bring to fruition and was a unique collaboration between its five editors – one from each of Te Papa’s disciplines – their colleagues and 12 guest essayists.

‘I think it’s fair to say that we were a dream team!,’ says Curator Historical New Zealand Art Rebecca Rice. ‘It’s definitely been one of the most joyous collaborative projects I’ve worked on – from the very beginning it’s been full of rich kōrero, full of respect, and full of fun.’

Each editor had a favourite object and they also each have a sense of the most strange, from ‘Nancy Adams’s “Vegetable sheep” because she makes their remarkable structure look like a cross-section of a brain’ and ‘Āwheto, A caterpillar that crawls into the ground, sprouts as a fungus, and is used as moko ink’ to ‘an insect masquerading as a leaf and a beautiful flower that tricks scavenging insects into pollinating them with its perfume of stinky, rotten meat’.

The book has an underlying climate emergency message that comes through in a number of ways including through ‘the examples of taonga that represent Indigenous knowledge,’ says Rebecca Rice. ‘These examples not only cultivate cultural appreciation and respect but also enhance our collective understanding of the interconnectedness between flora, climate change and the well-being of ecosystems and communities. In the current climate crisis, these taonga serve as a reminder of the importance of diverse perspectives in shaping sustainable solutions.’

Elegant, expert and engrossing, Flora goes on sale on 9 November.

Look inside Flora here: https://issuu.com/tepapapress/docs/flora_look_inside