Nature's Alchemy

Nature’s Alchemy features twelve artists who use materials such as mud, blood and ash to explore patterns and symbolism found within nature. Alongside Land Art pioneer and Turner Prize winner Richard Long, and Royal Academicians Cornelia Parker MBE and David Mach, the exhibition will showcase works by several mid-career gallery and guest artists whose use of natural materials evoke cycles of life and death. Ione Rucquoi deifies her prints of blood with gold leaf halos, Beatrice Haines creates paint pigment from her great uncle’s ashes, and Susan Gunn uses pigment made from female cochineal beetle to create deep-red surfaces that crack and fissure over time.

The artists all imitate the phenomena of naturally occurring forms, patterns and reactions throughout their life cycle, allowing chance and error to play as their works develop and age. The detritus of the natural world is transformed into something spectacular, as the artists celebrate the incidental beauty of decay and rebirth in nature.