Drawing from the museum and the rainforest: Lindsay Sekulowicz and Antje Southern in conversation

This Autumn Term, the Royal Drawing School’s Online Lecture Series hosts Creative Conversations; dialogues between artists, curators and writers. The series is curated by Dr Claudia Tobin, lectures are held Wednesday evenings live on Zoom.

Lindsay Sekulowicz and Antje Southern will talk about Lindsay’s work and her current practice-based doctoral study in collaboration with the science team at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and indigenous communities of the Northwest Amazon. They will discuss the forms of knowledge gained through making and drawing, and how slow looking and haptic making can shape artistic processes. They will also consider the role of the artist working within the archive, and discuss how ethnographic artefacts can be reinterpreted in the postcolonial era. 

Left: 'Weddellina squamulosa', Watercolour on Japanese paper
Right: 'Jaguar', Unfired clay with charcoal from Equisetum arvense and ink from Genipa americana

Lindsay Sekulowicz has worked closely with biologists for over a decade, examining scientific and historical archives and conducting fieldwork in Asia, Africa and South America. She was previously artist in resident and is a current PhD student at Kew Gardens Herbarium and Economic Botany Collection. She writes about plants, people and landscapes for a number of publications, and teaches alongside Antje Southern on the RDS Foundation Year.

Antje Southern studied Art History at UCL and the Warburg Institute. She taught connoisseurship at Christie’s Education and currently runs the Contextual Studies programme at the RDS Foundation Year. Passionate about ceramics and female explorers, her research interests are informed by working with practising artists and focuses on drawing as a tool for understanding and articulating humanity and its histories. 

Cover image: 'The Passengers', Clay, pigments, metal, gypsum and egg temper
All images Courtesy of the artist © Lindsay Sekulowicz