Extra Ordinary, 2021

An Installation consists of a dozen bronze sculptures of fallen London plane leaves placed in gallery space, on a plinth as well as randomly on the floor

Patinated bronze, 175x145mm each.

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Extra-ordinary is a series of hyper-realistic bronze sculptures depicting fallen leaves of the London plane (Platanus × hispanica) — a hybrid species born of both botanical chance and human intervention.

Believed to have emerged in 17th-century Europe, possibly in Spain or France, the tree embodies an accidental fusion of continents, a crossbreed between the Oriental plane (Platanus orientalis) and the American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis). Though its exact point of origin is debated, by the 18th and 19th centuries, it had become the defining tree of industrial London, thriving in conditions where others withered. Its ability to shed bark— a mechanism for cleansing itself of urban soot and pollution— allowed it to survive the smog-laden air of the Industrial Revolution, securing its place as the city’s most enduring arboreal presence.

Through Extra-ordinary, fallen leaves— often dismissed as seasonal debris— are transformed into bronze, a material historically reserved for monuments, statues, and objects of commemoration. In this translation from organic matter to metal, the work elevates the overlooked and unsettled traditional hierarchies of value, questioning what we choose to memorialise and why.

The London plane is seen here as a living record of migration, adaptation, and resilience — a botanical palimpsest shaped by the forces of colonialism, trade, and industrial expansion. By the time of Haussmann’s renovations in 19th-century Paris, the practice of lining streets with trees had become synonymous with modernity, and the London plane became an emblem of urban progress. Today, as one of the most widely planted city trees, their hybrid identity also reflects the ever-evolving landscapes it inhabits.

The sculptures interrogate the relationship between permanence and impermanence, nature and artifice, memory and loss. It invites us to reconsider what we overlook in the city— the fleeting, the discarded, the unnoticed— and recognise their quiet endurance. In doing so, the work reveals the London plane as a resilient witness to history, both ephemeral and eternal.