Imagined Lairs takes a look at how man views unique plant life. The concept stems from an amalgamation of two key ideas during the 19th century – Charles Darwin’s study drawings of carnivorous plants and the interest in Gothic horror novels of the Victorian era. Supernatural being like vampires were popular characters during that time and the emergent drawings of carnivorous plants fuelled the imagination of writers. A famous example is a novel about a group of explorers who set out to find the fabled man-eating Ya-te-veo tree of Madagascar.

My banner represents the idea of an imagined space inhabited by these exaggerated monster-plant forms. Such spaces are imagined because they are formed in the minds of man at the time when there were looking into the bizarre to satisfy their desire for new stories.