In 1862, Darwin was studying the Malagasy Orchid whose nectar lay inaccessibly at the bottom of a 30cm tube. He predicted that the flower must be pollinated by an unidentified moth with a tongue long enough to raid this spur.

Although few believed him, in 1903 the Hawksmoth was discovered.

The necessary ‘symbiosis’ upon which one species could only survive because of the existence of the other he theorised, meant they were locked in an ‘evolutionary arms race’, much like prey and predator, consumer and consumed, industrial and natural.

It’s an analogy at the heart of my work and I believe, also at the heart of the necessary adaptations we will undergo to find a symbiotic homeostasis with our planet, our fellow species, and our history.

‘I do not have time for this: the man with the movie camera lied. Mechanisation of respiration has not given us leave to breathe freely. Instead it has devalued and made less intimate the craft with which we fill our lungs. I have time for this: inhalation and meditation upon the fragrances that hang as a heady perfume in the frenetic city. The grease, the oil, the fumes that toxify cut through by a lightness that demands to be waited upon. It is [is it?] telling that the opposite to this idiom is expressed through inhalation: stop and smell the flowers. I demand that time.’ 

An excerpt from 'On the location of breath' By writer and curator Richard Hore