Christine Boreland

I was at a conference on Marine Conservation this past weekend at The Centre for Health Science in Inverness. This is a beautiful space full of light and plants, here I saw Christine Boreland's Ecbolic Garden, Winter 2001.
Christine was inspired by an old story about a Scottish doctor, Mark Jameson, from around the year 1550. The art installation is a series of 50 hand blown glass vessels suspended from the ceiling that contain the bleached ‘skeletons’ of plants preserved in alcohol, these plants were once used as abortifacients and include Juniper and Larkspur.

'Dr Jameson had an idea of planting a most specialised botanical garden at the university in Glasgow. Among other things, he wanted to plant a number of plant species known to induce abortions, even though they often involved a great risk for the women in question. Thus the name of the work: ‘Ecbolic Garden’, ‘ecbolian’ meaning abortion provoking.
We do not know if Dr. Jameson ever planted his garden and what he intended to do with it. Were his intentions with the project of a good or evil kind? We will never know, but Christine Borland’s work calls our attention to the complicated process of obtaining knowledge—and the fact that this process often is possible only because of other people’s sacrifices.'  John Calcutt