On 25 October 2019, the Garden Museum opened Lambeth Wilds, Katie Spragg’s largest permanent ceramic installation, developed through an Arts Council-funded residency with workshops involving local communities, including Lambeth Young Carers. Centring on overlooked wild, opportunistic plants—and likewise overlooked communities—the work was installed above the temporary exhibition space staircase. Building on Spragg’s concrete and porcelain practice, a hovering concrete base revealed intertwined porcelain roots, while dandelions, nettles, daisies, grasses and ferns “grew” from cracks.
The project realised Spragg’s aim to create work through collaboration with young carers, participants in the Clay for Dementia programme, and Museum visitors. She collected stories and memories of wild plants that informed the species depicted, extending a two-year programme with the Museum led with Janine Nelson, Head of Learning. In April 2019, Lambeth Young Carers undertook a six-day project: researching the collection and local flora, learning clay modelling and animation, and producing stop-frame films and spoken-word pieces with Eliza Legzdina on links between wild plants and caring. Their drawings, models and animations were shown alongside Spragg’s research during London Craft Week in May 2019, and visitors joined nature walks and pressed local plants into clay tiles to form a collaborative, three-dimensional nature diary.
Free
Free
