Hypothesis 1 & 2 is the debut collaborative project from Cynthia Fan and Hayden Malan, working together under the title Pear__ed. Their shared enquiry into botany, biology and art centres on the guiding question: “What do plants really want?” At once resisting and quoting traditions of flower arranging, the pair’s botanical compositions become a medium for spending (more) time with organic matter and listening to non-human sentience. The plants, shifting and changing over the course of the project, insist their autonomy – some wilt, others send out aerial roots, growth and decay persist.

Cynthia Fan is a florist and PhD candidate at The University of Edinburgh’s Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences. Hayden Malan is a landscape architect and artist. Together, they share a preoccupation with the sculptural potential of plants as both natural organisms and modular structures.