Botanical Art Worldwide 2025
Ireland

AN FÓMHAR FIÁIN – Ireland’s Wild Food Plants

About

As a small island on the Atlantic fringes of Europe, Ireland has a very limited range of heritage or ancient crops, and a relatively small native flora. However, a good proportion of our native and naturalised species are crop wild relatives and it is on this resource that we have chosen to focus our Worldwide project.

Crop wild relative species are the ancestors of food and forage plants for both humans and our domestic livestock. They are a living store of genetic diversity that we can draw on for future food security and to breed crops for pest and disease resistance.

As a signatory to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Ireland has, in 2009, prepared a list of crop wild relatives found on the island. Most of these plants were subsequently included in a book, The Wild Food Plants of Ireland by Tom Curtis and Paul Whelan. This book is our main resource and the artists have been choosing plants from this list.

We are hosting a number of virtual and in-person meetings to support the artists during the project.

Organizers

Irish Society of Botanical Artists, https://www.irishbotanicalartists.ie/

Steering Committee

The steering committee is currently the ISBA committee: Olwyn Burke, Hazel Beehan, Sylvia Linehan, Nayana Sandur, Bláthnaid NÍ Mhurchú and Mieke Brosnan. Tom Curtis is providing botanical assistance. In the coming months we will put together an exhibition steering committee drawn from the wider membership, many of whom have offered to help.

Venue

National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin, Ireland

Dates

17th-25th May 2025

Botanical Art Worldwide 2018

Botanical Art Worldwide in Ireland has been organized by the Irish Society of Botanical Artists, in collaboration with host venue the National Botanical Gardens, Dublin.  For the past year, more than 50 artists have been researching and painting their chosen Irish plants, producing stunning paintings for the exhibition, which is called “Éireannach”, which means ‘of Ireland’. 

On the day of Botanical Art Worldwide, the 18th May, 2018, Ireland will join with 24 other countries around the world, taking part in simultaneous exhibitions and an online slideshow.  Our exhibition at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin will contribute to this collaboration with an Open Day which will include tours by Zoë Devlin (whose website and books celebrate Ireland’s wild plants), painting demonstrations.  Visitors will be able to see the BAW Slideshow onscreen all day, connecting us with this exciting worldwide celebration of botanical art and native plants of each participating country.

The exhibition will also see the launch of a book by the same name, which will double as a catalogue for the exhibition. The passion of the artists for our island’s plants will be evident, not only in the paintings, but also in descriptions of the cultural and traditional meanings which make them so quintessentially Irish.  Also involved and contributing to this publication, will be sympathetic and related Irish organisations concerned with conservation, habitat and the preservation of our beautiful green land and its flora.  The Éireannach logo is a detail from Susan Sex’s painting of the Marsh Helleborine (Epipactis palustris), a native orchid found on lake shores, dunes and wet fields in Ireland.

For more information on this and other ISBA projects see: http://www.irishbotanicalartists.ie

One of ISBA’s artist support seminars, led by artist Susan Sex, for a previous project, Aibítir – The Irish Alphabet in Botanical Art. Susan is a specialist in the native orchids and wildflowers of Ireland, and published a book with Brendan Sayers, “Ireland’s Wild Orchids”.

Organizer

Irish Society of Botanical Artists

Steering Committee

Zoë Devlin
Yanny Petters
Jane Stark
Lynn Stringer

exhibition Venue

National Botanic Gardens, Dublin

Location

National Botanic Gardens, 9 Glasnevin Hill, Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland

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