Please join us at 4pm for this special opportunity to hear artist and writer Anna Chapman Parker read from her wonderful book Understorey: A Year Among Weeds. Anna will be in conversation with Professor Sarah Casey, and together they will talk about drawing, plants and places, and about what is often overlooked or elusive.

Understorey follows Chapman over the course of a year as she observes and draws the weeds and common wild plants that she encounters in her daily life – in her garden, along a local pavement or road edge, or following a tarmac path along the river.

‘As spring accelerates into summer, all over town new rashes of plants are taking over the flanks of the pavement edges, the crevices of the gutters and clefts in capstones, the overlooked behind spaces, the blind spots. I’ve been drawing these common wild plants or weeds almost daily since the year began, trying to record what I see as each new species emerges, shoots upward, flowers and subsides. Over the last few weeks though, I’ve been completely outpaced by the drama of the surge.’

Rich in observational detail, enquiry and sensory experience, Understorey retunes us to the small-scale, to the overlooked or undervalued, and reinvests the value of noticing, taking time and paying attention.