Created for Collect Art Fair 2022, Aliens developed through a remote collaboration between Townsend and curator Sally Whyman using digitally scanned specimens from the Welsh National Herbarium, National Museum Cardiff. Although the museum’s public galleries had reopened following the COVID-19 lockdowns, the research collections themselves remained inaccessible. Rather than working directly with the specimens, Townsend encountered the plants through high-resolution scans sent by email, experiencing the collection in much the same way as a distant online visitor.

The series focuses on non-native plant species held within the herbarium’s “alien” collection. Introduced to Britain through horticulture, trade, travel, and industry, these plants carry layered histories of movement, cultivation, adaptation, and control. Some arrived intentionally as prized ornamental specimens, while others travelled accidentally through shipping routes, contaminated goods, or ballast. Removed from their original environments and classified within scientific systems, the plants become entangled with wider questions surrounding migration, belonging, and the language used to describe those considered “other”.

Using beeswax collected from hives on the roof of National Museum Cardiff alongside paraffin wax and industrial materials, Townsend reconstructed the flattened herbarium specimens as three-dimensional forms. Mounted onto stainless steel plates bearing digitally reproduced collection data, the sculptures echo the structure of herbarium sheets while introducing a more unsettling physical presence. Tendrils lift from the surface, stems strain against metal restraints, and delicate flowers appear caught between preservation and escape, as though the specimens are attempting to pull themselves back into life.

Throughout the series, historical botanical collections are reimagined through contemporary systems of digitisation, material reconstruction, and remote access. Scientific records, institutional histories, ecological anxieties, and personal memory become layered together, allowing the works to move between archive, specimen, sculpture, and living thing.

Based on the digitally scanned image of a herbarium specimen collected in the glasshouse at National Museum Wales by Departmental Attendant J. W. Davies in 1956. Native to South America, Passiflora caerulea is a perennial climber cultivated for its unusually complex flowers and curling tendrils. Often planted against walls and fences, it persists even when neglected.

Based on the digitally scanned image of a herbarium specimen from the Welsh National Herbarium, collected in Margam Country Park by Botanical Photographer Peter Russell and Senior Curatorial Assistant Anthony D. Tipper in 1992.

Native to countries in the western and eastern Mediterranean, including Spain, Portugal and Turkey, Rhododendron ponticum was introduced to Britain as an ornamental shrub in 1763 and became especially popular on Victorian estates and gardens for its dense evergreen foliage and vivid purple flowers. Producing suckers from its roots and large quantities of seed, the plant spread steadily beyond cultivation, outcompeting native species beneath its shade. It is now listed as an invasive species under Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

Based on the digitally scanned image of a herbarium specimen from the Welsh National Herbarium, collected in Ely, Cardiff by plant enthusiast Royston Leslie Smith in 1957.

Smith was interested in recording plants that had hitchhiked their way into Wales via ships, and many of the specimens in his collection were discovered near Cardiff, Newport and Barry docks, growing from dumped ballast or as contaminants of raw wool imports. Native to South America, Verbena bonariensis is a tall perennial with purple flowers which attract butterflies and other pollinators.