Orlanda Broom’s works tap the excitable aspects of the imagination, through hyper-charged landscapes that are lush and verdant. Her invented plants, like her glowing vistas, are how the tropics might have been imagined from the descriptions of returning sailors in centuries past. On the one hand, there is an unashamed intensity, where exoticism has become translated into billowing fairytale fronds. On the other, there is something distinctly fatalistic about them: these ideas, once taken root, go on to grow out of all control. Sealed in a final shiny layer like the sticky secretions of the unknown flora, Orlanda’s works create a painterly equivalent of the siren: the lure of the beautiful idea that consumes all those it captures.
