NERO is an international publishing house devoted to art, criticism and contemporary culture. Founded in Rome in 2004, it publishes artists’ books, catalogs, editions and essays.

NERO explores present and future imaginaries beyond any field of specialization, format or code – as visual arts, music, philosophy, politics, aesthetics or fictional narrations – extensively investigating unconventional perspectives and provocative outlooks to decipher the essence of this ever changing reality.

NERO
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NETHERLANDS, GERMANY, AUSTRIA AND ALL OTHER COUNTRIES – Idea Books

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Heads of Content:
Valerio Mannucci, Lorenzo Micheli Gigotti

Creative Director:
Francesco de Figueiredo

Editor at large:
Luca Lo Pinto

Editors:
Michele Angiletta, Alessandra Castellazzi, Carlotta Colarieti, Clara Ciccioni, Carolina Feliziani, Tijana Mamula, Valerio Mattioli, Laura Tripaldi

News Editor:
Giulia Crispiani

Designers:
Elisa Chieruzzi, Lorenzo Curatola, Lola Giffard-Bouvier

Administration and Production:
Linda Lazzaro

Distribution:
Davide Francalanci

Notes Towards a Cow’s Parsley

Jessica Potter’s response to “ ” #3: Becky Beasley / Claire Scanlon

‘– Umbels are a family of mass and masses — formed umbels held on stalks reaching up with aromatic lightness to the sky — a gentle trembling of tiny petals formed in relation — shimmering and staring straight upwards — they spread and hold their flowers for bees and insects breathing fresh aromatic scent into the spring atmosphere. Some are delicious and some are deadly — their common names warning of the dangers of touch or consumption — Hemlock — horror. 

Cow parsley – GENTLE and common. Gracing hedgerow and curbside — one of the early ones to illuminate the vegetation. Umbels reach out — white, crisp, and fresh. A meter high or so — growing to the height a hand can brush against easily — enabling the eye to look down on the constellation.’

 

Jessica Potter’s response to Beasley and Scanlon’s conversation comes in the form of a video and photos documenting her practice: an obsession, a ramble, a fixation with the plant family of umbellifers (cow parsley, celery, carrot, chervil, coriander, dill, fennel, parsnip and so on). It’s all there, somewhere, in her pencil’s scratching movements across the paper, capturing each petal on each busy cluster: the conditions, structures, memories of our time; references to the thoughts of others; the lockdowns, the lack of sleep, the careers, the gardening, our immunity, winter, spring, Instagram, nightmares, children, all those things we need to talk about but we can’t bear to talk about anymore. What is left to say? 

 

Jessica Potter is an artist who lives and works in Kent. She completed her PhD, The Photograph as a Site of Writing in the Photography department at the RCA in 2013. Her practice spans drawing, writing and photography. Her research interests lie in considering questions of commonality alongside processes of description and encounter found in phenomenological thinking and writing.