Budding first for inorganic flora artist

The first exhibition in Scotland featuring the work of award-winning Japanese digital artist Macoto Murayama will be on display at the University of Dundee until late August.

Inspired by the unique work of internationally renowned polymath D’Arcy Thompson, the University’s first Professor of Biology, as well as the mathematical patterns of growth in plants, Murayama’s work features exquisitely beautiful prints of plant forms as if they were engineers’ blueprints.

Curator Matthew Jarron explained, “Murayama’s exhibition features what he calls ‘inorganic flora’. His extraordinary images are created after minutely dissecting real flowers and studying them under a microscope. This work asks important questions about how we see and understand the world.” 

The exhibition forms part of the Ignite Festival and will be on show in the University’s Lamb Gallery until Saturday, 20th August.

Murayama has long had an interest in D’Arcy Thompson’s work on mathematical biology and morphogenesis, the biological process that causes an organism to develop its shape.

The free exhibition is now open to the public at the Lamb Gallery in the University’s Tower Building and will run until Saturday, 20th August. It is open weekdays, 9:30am-7pm and Saturdays 1-5pm.

Murayama will also give a free talk about his work in the D’Arcy Thompson Lecture Theatre at 6pm on Tuesday, 24th May.

The exhibition has been funded with support from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.


For media enquiries contact:
Dominic Glasgow
Media Relations Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
Tel: +44 (0)1382 385131
Email: d.w.glasgow@dundee.ac.uk