Flora Reimagined: Shamani Surendran at the Wimbledon Museum
Flora Reimagined: Shamani Surendran at the Wimbledon Museum
By Tara Robinson
This September, the Wimbledon Museum welcomes local photographer Shamani Surendran as their first ever Photographer in Residence. This is part of their current initiative to spotlight local artists in their adjacent Norman Plastow gallery.
Shamani’s photography showcases the stunning natural beauty of our local landscape, with a focus on trees, flora, and reflections on Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park. She became passionate about photography whilst out on walks with her dog during COVID lockdown, when local parks were transformed into safe havens. Capturing her favourite pieces of natural beauty became an almost meditative exercise. She says, “these images of our favourite spots are a way of feeling, of touching, of remembering, long after the moment has passed.”
The photographer’s pieces are hazy and dreamy, full of nostalgia and misty mixes of colour. They encourage the viewer to think about these beautiful local areas in new ways, to consider how the imagination and the observing eye can work in tandem to create new forms of seeing. This mixture of memory, emotion and observation is at the heart of Shamani’s work.
Visitors to the Museum on the weekends of September 15-17 and 22-24 will have the opportunity to visit Shamani’s exhibition ‘Flora Reimagined.’ You will also have the chance to meet the photographer herself to find out more about her passion and process.
