Endangered : the Lady's Slipper Orchid

Introducing Lady's Slipper Orchid - a new collaboration with sculptor Mark Butler.

For a new project titled Endangered, Butler has commissioned twenty-one texts on endangered species from contemporary writers and is creating a response in his own media of bronze and steel. Each of the species was chosen from the Nature Recovery Plan for the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Lady's Slipper by Mark Butler with text by Nancy Campbell from Endangered

I have long been intrigued by orchids and the secrecy necessary to protect them in the wild. The Lady's Slipper Orchid is one of the rarest plants in the UK being found only in the Yorkshire Dales. This has led to the irony of the plant being caged in the wild or even uprooted from the wild (as in a controversial move in 1958) to preserve an idea of wildness. I was struck by parallels between conservationists' efforts to hide the plant from collectors and the deceptive art of the orchid flower itself, which has evolved to lure in pollinators. Often the art of editing a poem lies in the writer cutting a great deal, but the orchid is such a flagrant performer, that I allowed this poem its long lines and more florid expression. I had an uncanny sense that the orchid began to speak in its own voice. In The final artwork, combines text from my original draft, which Butler has cannily worked on using erasure, evoking the plant’s characteristic contrast of concealment and display. 

Endangered will be exhibited at several venues in 2027, and meanwhile the project can be seen on Butler's website.