[‘The Evolution of Forms’ by Marc Quinn, outside Kew Gardens’ Palm House. The stainless steel sculpture is based on a Sobralia orchid found at Kew Gardens and is part of a new exhibition called ‘Light into Life’]
[Water droplets on sculpture]
[‘Happy Tree’ sculpture outside Temperate House, based on Camptotheca acuminata, a plant from which cancer drugs are derived]
[Inside Temperate House]
[‘The Morphology of Forms’]
[Marc Quinn filming his sculpture ‘Turmeric’]
Marc Quinn (interview): “Kew approached me to do something and I came down, and I hadn’t really been for a long time. And when I came here and realized that they have hundreds of scientists doing research and horticulturists and I spent more and more time here, I realized that there was actually a whole show to do here, so we worked together to do that. I mean, the sculpture we’re standing next to now is from a herbarium sample, and they’re sculptures of plants that have been used to create anti-cancer medicines.”
[Palm House]
[Sculpture based on palms in front of Palm House]
[‘Sabal,’ based on palm plants]
[Sculpture]
[Photosynthetic Form’ based on Phalaenopsis orchid]
[‘The Release of Oxygen,’ based on a Phalaenopsis orchid, amongst plants in Temperate House]
Marc Quinn (interview): “Yeah, I love the way they interact with the gardens and I love also the idea that these sculptures that were conceived here are now shown here. So they’re kind of like being born into their own environment. And it’s such a beautiful place. And because there’s so much about reflection, you see this beauty doubled, trebled, redoubled. It just feels to me like a beautifully integral presentation.”
[‘Burning Desire’ in area of Kew’s Great Pagoda building]
Paul Denton (interview): “They are colossal. So lots of the works were brought here, and it’s taken over two months to get individual works in place. We work really closely, you know the gardens are open 364 days a year and so we have to work really closely with both the horticultural team and the gardens team to kind of work out how are we going to do this and make it work. So some are existing works that get brought in, some are new works that were fabricated but have to be remade on site and it’s that technical problem which is hugely amazing and an amazing group of teams make it happen.”
[Vehicle passing ‘Turmeric’]
[‘Turmeric’ and Temperate House]
[Senior research leader in biological chemistry at Kew, Dr. Melanie-Jayne Howes, looking at ‘Pacific Yew’ sculpture, based on plant from which cancer drugs have been derived]
Dr. Melanie-Jayne Howes (interview): “Overharvesting of trees of this species actually put the species under threat. And so scientists needed to find a more sustainable way to source this useful drug. And so they turned to another species, which is common yew, the European yew, Taxus baccata and they found that similar chemicals occurred in the leaves. So the leaves could be harvested much more sustainably without killing trees and then converted in the laboratory into paclitaxel. So this is actually a good example to show how understanding plant chemistry and also understanding how plants are related, which is the type of work that we’re doing here at Kew, how this knowledge can help scientists find more sustainable ways to derive medicines from nature.”
[‘Bismarkia,’ based on palm plants]
Dr. Melanie-Jayne Howes (interview): “We currently know that around 45% of flowering plants are at risk of extinction and so it’s absolutely critical that we can preserve biodiversity, so plants, fungi and other organisms, because we could potentially be losing opportunities to find solutions to challenges, for example, to our health and also to our environment.”
[‘The Dimensions of Freedom,’ based on bonsai trees]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.