Pertaining to Things Natural

7/31/2019 Pertaining to Things Natural

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/pertaining-to-things-natural 1/6

Pertaining to things Natural...

Sculpture at the Chelsea Physic Garden

10 July – 31 October 2012

Illustration: Jo Coupe, To Airy inness Beat

Owen Bullet James Capper

Annie Cattrell Jo Coupe Joe Currie

Judith DeanChris Drury Tessa Farmer

James Graham

GreyworldTim KnowlesTania KovatsKeith Rand

Peter Randall Page William PeersMichael Shaw

Ward &Wright Julian Wild

Hugo WilsonDavid Worthington



By offering this platform to artists Pertaining to Things Natural... hopes to construct visual and sensory

metaphors that reach a wider audience through positive, physical and emotional experiences. As

environmental organisations consider new ways to engage the public in environmental issues affecting the

planet, artists continue to make a significant contribution through the development of a language that

resonates with people on a more profound level, helping to create a strong cultural response to the challenges

of the 21st century.

Curator, David Worthington writes:

“The opportunity to stage an exhibition in the grounds of Chelsea Physic Garden was exciting to me as it was

to the other participating artists. The whole project has grown organically in response to the history and legacy

of the garden and its scientific work. The more all of us researched into that history the more we discovered. As

a result the idea came to me to organize a conference around the show looking at how artists could respond to

the environmental debate in their practice. We are very grateful for the enthusiasm of the directors of Chelsea

Physic Garden as well as the team of gardeners who have been enormously helpful to the artists at every stage

of the work.”

Eden Lab Creative Director Peter Hampel writes:

“The collaboration with The Eden Project also allows us to look at ways of building an enduring platform for

artists to contribute to the ecological movement through future exhibitions and creative projects and will help

forge international partnerships to take our work to a global audience.”.

Editorial Notes:

CHELSEA PHYSIC GARDEN

Founded in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London, as a place where apprentice

apothecaries could study the qualities and uses of medicinal plants and where plants could be grown before

being taken to the laboratory at Apothecaries Hall at Blackfriars to be made into pills and potions to be sold.

DAVIDWORTHINGTON [b.1962] is a professional sculptor and Vice President of the Royal British Society of

Sculptors. He is a graduate in Theology and Philosophy from Lady Margaret Hall Oxford University. He studied

art in London Barcelona and New York and worked as a stone carver for Anish Kapoor. He has exhibited widelyand had two solo shows with the Lefevre Gallery. He lives and works in Dorset.

ART HAPPENS is a limited liability partnership established by John Martin. Art Happens develops art events and

marketing initiatives to build audiences for contemporary art whilst creating significant social, environmental

or economic impact, independent of the art market.

EDEN LAB is a creative consultancy set up by Eden’s former Creative Director Peter Hampel FRSA to take Eden’s

arts-led public engagement philosophy to new audiences internationally working in collaboration with

artists. The aim is to provide a platform for the ongoing research, development and showcasing of new forms

of creative expression and community engagement which inspire a deeper appreciation of our vital relation-

ship with the Natural World and encourage people to care more about each other and the planet.

Art Happens in Association with Eden Lab

Curator, David Worthington

Director, Art Happens, John Martin

Director, Eden Lab, Pete Hampel

Assistant Curator, Rebecca Lewin

Conference Adviser, Hendrikus van Hensbergen

Public Relations: All enquiries please contact Will Paget at Paget PRTelephone: 020 7323 6963, email: [email protected] @P2ThingsN



PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Owen Bullett

Owen has continued making & exhibiting since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2005, and hissculptures are to be found in private collections around the world. Unusual combinations of specific types of wood with metal, paint, resin and electro-luminescent wire create elegant forms that twist through space andinteract with their environment. He regularly takes part in residency programmes from the UK to France and

Belize. Solo exhibitions include Marsden Woo Gallery, London (2010) and Ashwin Street, London (2010) he haspreviously been included in Sculpture at Glyndebourne (2010) and La Générale, Paris (2006).

James Capper

James Capper’s work centres on the design and production of machines, which either have the potential to beused to make marks in their surroundings, or have the autonomous ability to do so. Deconstructing theperceived boundary between functional objects and functionless art, his Ripper Teeth were put into action inan offsite project commissioned by Modern Art Oxford in 2011. He has also exhibited at New Art Centre, RocheCourt (2010), The Peckham Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennial (2009), and was joint winner of the Jack Goldhillaward for sculpture in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London (2009).

Annie Cattrell

Annie Cattrell’s practice is borne out of an ongoing interest in the threshold between art and science, betweenvisible objects and ephemeral ideas or experiences. Working in glass, her delicate objects take natural objectsas their subject matter – clouds, lungs, rock formations or the retina – and she employs new methods of digitalscanning to recreate transitory moments as three-dimensional objects. Her work is represented innumerous public collections in the UK and she has exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum (2007-8),Kunstverein Freiburg (2006), the National Museum of Stockholm (2005) and the Science Museum, London(2002).

Jo Coupe

Jo Coupe graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Newcastle University in 1998. In 2005, she completed an MAat Goldsmiths College and now lives and works in Gateshead. Interested in subtle manipulations of objects –through magnetic fields and the addition of gold leaf to existing structures – her delicate interventions into and

documentation of unusual phenomena alters the viewer’s perception of the world. Her work is represented inpublic and private collections internationally, and recent projects have included commissions for Rio TintoAlcan, Northumberland (2010) and Tatton Park Biennial, Cheshire (2007) and solo exhibitions at AirspaceGallery, Stoke on Trent (2011), Workplace Gallery, Gateshead (2009) and First-site, Colchester (2006).

Joe Currie

Developing from the explosion of pop culture into contemporary art in the 1960s, Joe Currie’s paintings,drawings and sculptures manipulate recognizable Americana and comic book kitsch and poke fun at thetwenty-first century’s nostalgia for this period. Working in a variety of materials, he has shown at AshwinStreet Gallery (2006), Art Frankfurt (2004) and Thebes Gallery, Lewes (2001). He is currently organizing asculpture park in the grounds of St Luke’s Hospice in Plymouth, Devon.

Judith Dean

Judith Dean has been working and exhibiting internationally for the last 20 years. She creates artworks as aresponse to her surroundings, altering objects to imbue them with a sense of importance or humour, andcreating open-ended narratives that the viewer is encouraged to complete. Current projects include ‘Roadfor the Future’ at Powerstock Common, Dorset and is a co-founder of idonthaveyourmarbles’, a collaborative,global project that employs a pre-existing online economic platform to engage in ideas of value, ownership andimmaterial labour (2010 – present). She won the Jerwood Sculpture Prize in 2005, and her work has beenexhibited at Beaconsfield, London (2006), the Wordsworth Museum (2006-2007) and Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge(2002).

Chris Drury

Chris Drury is a land artist whose work makes connections between nature and culture, inner structures and

outer forms, and microcosms and macrocosms. He employs the most appropriate means and materials tomake these connections explicit in each project, and has worked with numerous specialists in science andtechnology to realise ephemeral projects as well as lasting objects. He has worked and exhibitedinternationally, including at Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Gallery, Lochmaddy, Western Isles (2010), the



Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (2008), the Vanderbilt University art gallery, Nashville (2008) and the De La WarrPavilion, Bexhill (2002).

Tessa Farmer

The miniscule creatures in Tessa Farmer’s installations are not friendly; mischevious and almost diabolical,they use the dead bodies of insects and birds as vessels. The vitrines in which Tessa Farmer displays hertableaux brim with miniature details, often only appreciable through a magnifying glass. Her work is included

in the collections of the Saatchi Gallery, the Ashmolean Museum and the David Roberts Collection, and she hasexhibited at Mottisfont Abbey, Hampshire (2011), the Barbican, London (2010), the Natural History Museum,London (2007) and at Firstsite, Colchester (2006).

Greyworld

Greyworld is an artists’ collective who produce work for public, often urban, spaces. Seeking to activate areasthat would otherwise be overlooked, their sculptural and sonic installations have been installed and exhibitedin the UK and abroad, including at Grizedale Forest, Cumbria (2011), The Plaza, Cambridge (2005) and theVictoria & Albert Museum (2003).

James P. Graham

James P Graham has been working as a fine artist since 2003 after a career in film and photography. Hisinterest in landscape and the environment focuses specifically on the creation of sacred spaces through humanritual and natural alchemy, and his large-scale film installation Iddu (2007), which captures the extraordinaryactivity of the active volcano Stromboli, has been exhibited internationally. His work has been shown at theBenaki Museum, Athens (2010), Compton Verney (2010), the Sydney Biennial (2010) and the Musée d’ArtModerne Luxembourg (2007).

Tim Knowles

Tim Knowles explores new ways of recording the movement through time and space of disparate bodies,whether they are humans, trees, insects, envelopes, gusts of wind or moonlit nights. The resulting drawings,photographs and films are both organic and diagrammatic, recording and making visible things that are usuallyexperienced only fleetingly. He has exhibited at bitforms Gallery, New York (2011), the Horticultural Society,New York (2011), The Exchange, Penzance (2010) and the Plymouth Arts Centre (2009).

Tania Kovats

Tania Kovats confronts the way in which we attempt to understand and experience landscape, includinggeological processes and scientific research as part of her practice. Her recent work has focussed on drawingand mapping landscapes and she has created bodies of work on imaginary and existing islands. In 2010 sheexhibited at Bradford I Gallery and in 2009 was commissioned by the Natural History Museum to create aninstallation as a commemoration of Darwin’s centenary. She has also been included in exhibitions atBALTIC, Gateshead (2009), the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2008), the Hayward Gallery, London (2006) andCompton Verney, Oxfordshire (2005).

William Peers

William Peers carves most often with marble and with Hornton stone, and until recently focussed on carvingsthat hang on the wall, in order to place greater emphasis on the surface of the stone and the delicate treatmentof its qualities. His freestanding works often explore an area of subject matter which exists somewherebetween abstract and figurative poses, but always retain an organic presence. His work was included inSculpture at Glyndebourne (2011), Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire (2010), Woburn Abbey (2009) and The ArmouryShow, New York (2002).

Peter Randall-Page

During the last 25 years Peter Randall-Page’s sculptures, drawings and prints have been exhibited widely bothin the UK and abroad. Inspired by shapes and patterns found in naturally occurring objects, his work evokesa physical response, whether it is to a monumental object or installation, or to an intricate work on paper.Randall-Page is represented in the collections of the Tate and the British Museum, and he has been exhibitedwidely, including at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2010), Dulwich Picture Gallery (2010), Eden Project (2007) and

the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2000).



Michael Shaw

Michael Shaw’s works are digitally mapped using computer-aided design software prior to being manifested inthree-dimensional space as thermoformed plastic sculptures, inflatable sculptures, chameleon-like light worksor animated drawings. These organic shapes invade architectural spaces, reconfiguring the way they can beinhabited and used and demanding a new consideration of their surroundings. He has shown extensively,including at South Hill Park Arts Centre (2010) the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (2009), the ClaphamPicturehouse (2008), the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (2008) and Burghley Sculpture Garden (2006).

Ward & Wright

Cathy Ward and Eric Wright chart the way in which we have distanced ourselves from the natural world bymythologizing it. The objects which they collect, alter and display, their films and their drawings all speak of the hyper-romantic versions of reality captured by artists and storytellers throughout history. They haveexhibited widely, including at MoMA PS1, New York (2004), Standpoint Gallery, London (2003) and the RoyalBritish Society of Sculptors (2002).

Julian Wild

Julian Wild’s complex sculptures and drawings are reminiscent of architectural plans whose internalsystems have taken on a life of their own. Soft organic shapes or building pipes or wires twist and turn back

on themselves, creating chaos within overall forms whose limits are strictly demarcated. He has shown workat Burghley House, Lincolnshire (2011), Leighton House Museum, London (2010) and Woburn Abbey (2009). In2012-13 his sculptures will be installed in Bishops’ Square, Spitalfields, along with an accompanying exhibitionof maquettes and drawings in the foyer of Allen and Overy.

David Worthington

David Worthington is a sculptor who works principally with stone. In recent years he has developed a series of mobile sculptures which become kinetic only when the viewer interacts with them. His abstract, elegant formsare enormously tactile, encouraging a sense of self as a physical object existing in relation to the sculpture. Hehas undertaken numerous commissions in the UK and the USA and has exhibited internationally, including atGlyndebourne (2011), The Royal British Society of Sculptors (2009), Woburn Abbey (2009) and Asthall Manor,Oxfordshire (2008).

Pertaining to Things Natural

Documents

Transcript of Pertaining to Things Natural