Underneath

Modern day artist Jacques Nimki's practice involves the use of wild plants to communicate ideas about environmental and cultural issues. His compositions are intricate and gradually built up using hundreds of life sized drawings. Using water based media and sometimes real plants laminated into the surface of the work for additional texture, he documents a given area of weeds/wildflowers over a block of time. He is interested in making " a carefully constructed record of what is regarded as worthless and insignificant ... and imbue them with a sense of exclusivity and beauty." ( pg. 210, Art of the Garden: The Garden in British Art 1800 to the Present Day) I think Nimki is very successful in his pursuits. He is a good example of an artist who has created a large body of work based on the ordinary, the overlooked.


In 2006 Nimki had a second solo show at The Approach . As part of the show he transplanted weeds he had grown from seeds using artificial lighting and a Hydrophonics system.

Image from The Approach

Check out the close up views of some of these images to discover the world composed by Nimki.

Another interesting project that Nimki has created can be found at this site called Untold . He uses an interface on his palm pilot to collect much of his data for his artwork. On this site visitors are allowed to interact with his data by printing out sketches of plants and emailing them to friends. As the site says... "Each time a sketch is printed it turns up on a different place on the page mimicking the way weeds appear.

I first came across Nimki's work while reading Art of the Garden which was a publication based on a major show at the Tate that looked at the work of British artists over several centuries whose work focused on gardens. His focus on weeds and wildflowers brought me back to Ruskin's direction to paint what grows naturally, not what is tended by humans. The intricate nature of Nimki's work produces a world that the viewer can become lost in. The beauty of the overlooked and unconsidered cannot be ignored.