Three timelines, one family, and a virtual gallery that won’t stay silent. Wander through the exhibition, between her artworks, and feel the passion. Inhabit their worlds of hope, struggle and generational turmoil. But most of all… make a difference.
Archive note…
Regarding the recorded manuscript,
every chapter header is colour coded by timeline.
Introductions to the people who carry this story across the centuries.
We are indebted to the eminent Dr Elias Thorne, founder of Nurture… The Earth Lung Institute, for kindly contributing the following Foreword to this archive.
When I founded Nurture... The Earth Lung Institute eighteen years ago, I believed that saving forests would be enough. I was wrong. Trees cannot save a civilisation that has forgotten why it should care. Stories can.
There are moments in history when humanity measures itself not by what it builds, but by what it chooses to preserve.
For centuries we believed progress was measured in taller cities, faster machines and greater consumption. We celebrated invention while quietly overlooking the fragile systems that had always sustained us. Forests became commodities. Oceans became reservoirs. The atmosphere became an afterthought.
Nature, however, keeps perfect accounts.
The debt was always going to fall due.
The archive you are about to enter is unlike any manuscript I have encountered before.
Whether you choose to regard it as fiction, speculation, warning or hope, it is ultimately a decision only you can make.
I would encourage you, however, not to concern yourself too greatly with those distinctions. Throughout history, imagination has often reached tomorrow before science could explain it.
At its heart, this is not simply a story about artificial intelligence, climate change or humanity’s possible future. It is a story about inheritance.
What do we leave behind?
What do we choose to carry forward?
What deserves to survive us?
Those questions are no longer philosophical. They are ecological, technological and deeply personal.
As founder of the Earth Lung Institute, I have devoted much of my life to restoring damaged ecosystems and protecting those still capable of healing themselves. Every forest regenerated, every coral reef restored and every species recovered begins with a remarkably simple act: someone deciding that tomorrow matters.
The dialogue that follows explores that same decision through the extraordinary journey of one family whose roots appear to stretch not only through history, but through time itself.
You will encounter scientists and artists, dreamers and engineers, explorers, lovers and unlikely prophets. You will meet people separated by centuries yet connected by ideas. You will almost certainly become lost from time to time.
Do not be discouraged
Some galleries are not designed to be understood from the doorway
Walk slowly
Observe carefully
Allow each room to reveal itself before moving to the next
Like all worthwhile journeys, understanding comes not in a single revelation, but through accumulation. Seemingly insignificant details return generations later. A forgotten object acquires profound meaning. A simple tree becomes something far greater than just leaves, roots and a trunk.
Most importantly, remember that every future is shaped by countless ordinary decisions made in the present.
If this remarkable archive leaves you with one lasting thought, I hope it is this:
The planet has never required heroes in great numbers
It has always required enough ordinary people willing to care
Welcome to the gallery and collective works of Samantha Banks.
Art cannot repair a dying world, but it can persuade someone that the world is worth repairing.
Take your time
The exhibition has been waiting for you
Dr Elias ThorneFounder
The Earth Lung Institute
Restricted archive
Warning
Do not open… Penalties apply
Each painting has its own room, with its pencil renders and the artist's own notes. Step inside.
Working diagrams
More paintings by Samantha Banks.
Portraits from the family's own album, kept across the centuries.
Early sepia snapshots
Century 21Archive feed
Real photographs from the author's own family, circa early to mid 20th century, and the true inspiration behind the novel “The Last Super”.
Open the family album →
David Boys Taylor grew up in Dorset, the eldest of three children. He spent the first thirty years of his life in the UK and the next thirty in New Zealand. Today he lives completely off grid with his wife in the mountains of Mindanao, in the Philippines, but still calls all three countries home.
A chef for most of his working life, he represented Britain at the 1996 Culinary Olympics in Berlin, winning an individual gold medal. He went on to hold head chef positions in London, before opening two award-winning restaurants of his own in New Zealand.
Along the way he drove around Australia with a young family, travelled to Antarctica, the Falklands and South America, and more recently turned his hand to restoring mid-century furniture and curios sourced from Europe.
An artist at heart, if a frustrated one, he found in The Last Super the ideal vehicle to steer his maiden novel. It all began with that shoebox in the loft.
