Plant matter

Munnecke's practice moves between painting, textile and installation. She grows, gathers and processes much of her material herself, so the work begins long before the studio: with seeds germinating, plants growing, harvests, fermentation and archiving. That labour takes up as much space as the finished work, and the finished work keeps its traces.

Colour made from plants cannot be standardised. The same plant gives a different result in another year, on another cloth, in other water. Munnecke treats this instability as a condition of the work rather than a flaw to correct. Each piece records the circumstances it was made under, and no colour can be made twice.

The works are often figurative. Faces, hands and bodies surface from fields of colour, and many titles come from myths of metamorphosis, such as Daphne, Syrinx, Narcissus and the hamadryads, where the line between human and plant gives way. In Munnecke's work that line stays open.