Kew Gardens – Marianne North: ‘A World in Paintings’

Trunk animation studio in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, created a film to highlight the amazing legacy of Marianne North, who is described as ‘Kew’s Forgotten Queen’.

The film was released on International Women’s Day in 2019 and detailed her phenomenal life and work. She spent half of her life capturing the natural world through stunning oil paintings in exquisite detail. A remarkable endeavour but astonishing when you realise as a lone Victorian woman she painted in the most remote, dangerous and extreme environments on earth. Her legacy is displayed in the spectacular Marianne North Gallery within the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Conceived and created by the artist herself, the gallery is a jewel with paintings arranged from dado to ceiling covering every inch of the galleries walls. Yet, whilst this is the oldest permanent solo exhibition by a female artist in the world, it is relatively unknown.

Trunk’s director Rok Predin’s short film uses Marianne’s own paintings and words as a vehicle to show her amazing life digitally deconstructing and reconstructing the paintings, creating layers that contained individual cut out elements, as well as under painting the missing areas, all in the style of Marianne.

Fonic created a sound design and mix that aimed to sincerely encapsulate the incredible journey of Marianne’s life!