AustLit

Using photographs and text, Botanikos calls on its readers/viewers to understand the deeply rooted dependence we have on the universe and its plants to sustain human life. This is another one of Oppen’s’ works that call on her readers/viewers to reflect on the simplest aspects of human life itself and remember the unbreakable tie to nature that it holds.

'Botanikos celebrates simply the significance of plants to the sustenance of life on our planet. Plants are everywhere except the very extreme zones, because of their omnipresence we take them for granted. This book calls you to stop and take note' (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).

The book also includes a small public declaration piece; 'It’s Time!.'

This is the second book of the Botanikos project. The work covers the relationship between human philosophy/life and plants and the overall effect that nature has on the human life. Oppen produces photographs of botanic gardens and the sky, and uses select texts from Michael Marder's Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (2013) to explore human life's dependency on the ‘green world’.

Designated the third part of the Botanikos Project, A Common Sense of Nature comprises colour photographs, colour illustrations and text by Oppen. The work is an artist’s book on the local environment of Sydney, while demonstrating the deficiencies of our language to pin-point the true beauty, complexities and eccentricities the natural world.

The seventh part of Monica Oppen's Botanikos project, From the City into Trees comprises images and graphics by Oppen, along with text extracts from Robert Macfarlane's The Wild Places (2007) and Tony Jupiter's What has Nature Ever Done for Us?: How Money Really Does Grow on Trees (2013). This work and the related work Night-Walker, were influenced by a hand drawn creation created by Oppen at art school in 1989.