Collected's 24in24 - Emma recommends... Understorey - Anna Chapman Parker

Emma recommends... A beautiful, quiet, and tender day-to-day exploration of what can be gained by paying attention to even the smallest things, Understorey is an absolute delight of a book. Drawing on Anna's broad hinterland of knowledge and references as well as her finely rendered sketches, there is so much to enjoy and reflect on in these pages. We were lucky enough to have Anna into the shop to talk about the book and now I want to read it all over again!

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In Understorey, artist and writer Anna Chapman Parker records in prose and stunning original line drawings a year spent looking closely at weeds, our most ubiquitous and accessible plants. In gardens, on verges or clustered around municipal lampposts, weeds offer a year-round spectacle of wildlife. The benefits to us of being among greenery are well known, but what exactly are these vaguely familiar shapes that accompany our every step, yet pass beneath our notice? How and when do they emerge, bloom and subside, and what would it mean to notice them?

Meditating too on how they appear in other artists’ work, from a bramble framing a sixth-century Byzantine manuscript to a kudzu vine installation in contemporary Berlin, Chapman Parker explores the art of paying attention even to the smallest things.