Fruit: edible, inedible, incredible

Fruit. The word conjures up mouthwatering memories of crunchy apples, luscious strawberries, sweet bananas, succulent melons and juicy pineapples. The well-travelled will also recall the splendid cornucopia of tropical fruits that thrive in the warmer climes of our planet and have now conquered supermarket shelves all over the world. A wonderful gift from nature indeed but providing us with an abundant source of food is not the main reason that plants produce such delicious fruits. We all know that many fruits are not edible and that some are even poisonous. It is therefore quite legitimate to ask what fruits are and why they exist.

As will be revealed, fruits are part of a much more elaborate plot. Their true nature is concealed in what is buried in their core: their seeds. Seeds are the most sophisticated and precious organs produced by plants in that they bear the next generation. Fruits and seeds together are responsible for the successful reproduction and dispersal of the species. The key role that fruits and seeds play in the survival of each species explains the manifold dispersal strategies that plants have developed during the course of their evolution. The strategies they pursue, whether they involve wind, water, humans and animals or the plant's own explosive triggers, are reflected in a plethora of different colours, sizes and shapes.

Rob Kesseler

Research Interests

Representation of nature within contemporary culture. Arts and craft movement, modernism, post modernism. Ceramic Art & Design. Electron microscopy, ceramics, NESTA, Kew Gardens, Pollen, Seeds

Current Research

My practice inhabits a territory where Design, Fine Art and Applied Art overlap and explores the interrelationship between the Arts and Sciences, in particular the natural world, for which I was recently awarded a three year fellowship from NESTA to work with microscopic plant material in the herbarium at Kew. This has resulted in a diverse range of projects: installations, public art and landscaping commissions, works in ceramic, glass and textiles, and digital photography. I recently published two major books in collaboration with botanical scientists at Kew, Pollen The Hidden Sexuality of Flowers and Seeds, Time Capsules of Life, which in which original micrographs were digitally remastered in colour to reveal mesmeric structures that lie somewhere between science and symbolism.

Current projects include Hortus in Vitro,an architectural glass commission for the Botanic Garden in Oxford University, a design collaboration with Royal Crown Derby China and a third book in collaboration with Kew on Fruit. In 2006 I was elected as a Fellow of the Linnaean Society for my work in the field of visualising plant science. Additionally I am a board member of the Atoms to Art research network in Ceramic & Glass, and also a member of AIR the Artists Advisory Group for a-n magazine.