Navigating Norman Creek: engaging art in geographies of plants and urban natures

Abstract

Cultural geographies of plants and urban natures have blossomed in the last two decades as researchers ride the wave of ‘materialist returns’ to more-than-human worlds. In this, participant observation and allied techniques have proved popular with geographers looking for ways of engaging life beyond the human and registers of representation. Subject to these ethnographic impulses in my own research, here I offer an essay that reflects on the role art might play in learning about the entwined lives of people, plants and urban places. Serendipity brought me to an exhibition called Navigating Norman Creek and the essay considers the ways it spoke to concerns with the ‘urban forest’. Although Navigating Norman Creek was about an inner city waterway, it shone some light on the ethics of urban forestation and the inter-corporeal exchanges people have with urban plants and animals. For this reason, the essay suggests there is a place for engaging art in the methods we use to research cultural geographies of plants and urban natures.