Pertaining to things Natural...

Sculpture at the Chelsea Physic Garden 10 July 31 October 2012

Owen Bullet James Capper Annie Cattrell Jo Coupe Joe Currie Judith Dean Chris Drury Tessa Farmer James Graham Greyworld Tim Knowles Tania Kovats Keith Rand Peter Randall Page William Peers Michael Shaw Ward &Wright Julian Wild Hugo Wilson David Worthington

Illustration: Jo Coupe, To Airy

inness Beat

Pertaining to Things Natural...

Sculpture at the Chelsea Physic Garden
10 July 31 October 2012 Included in admission price to Chelsea Physic Garden 9/6

Artistic Strategies and the Environment

Research, Workshops and Presentations, Chelsea Physic Garden

Monday 8 October, 2012, 10am - 4pm Conference to consider creative responses to environmental issues In collaboration with Art happens, Eden Lab and Eden Project

Curators Tour and al fresco Supper

Monday 15 October, 5-8.30pm 2012 Curators Tour and supper at Tangerine Dream Caf, Tickets 35 (30 for Friends of Chelsea Physic Garden). Part of the Chelsea Festival. Email Friends@chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk to book places.

The biggest exhibition in the history of Londons oldest botanic garden

Pertaining to Things Natural A major outdoor sculpture show opens on 10 July at Chelsea Physic Garden. The exhibition, a collaboration between Art Happens and Chelsea Physic Garden, presents monumental sculptural works, ephemeral land art projects and delicate interventions by over twenty leading artists. Curated by David Worthington, Vice President of the Royal British Society of Sculptors, Pertaining to Things Natural takes its name from the 17th century denition of physic and is a reminder of the Physic Gardens founding mission as a place for the study of useful plants especially those used in medicines. Artists: Owen Bullet, James Capper, Annie Cattrell, Jo Coupe, Joe Currie, Judith Dean, Chris Drury, Tessa Farmer, James Graham, Greyworld, Tim Knowles, Tania Kovats, Keith Rand, Peter Randall Page, William Peers, Michael Shaw, Ward & Wright, Julian Wild, Hugo Wilson and David Worthington.

Pertaining to Things Natural... offers a compelling insight into contemporary creativity inspired by the natural world. Whether or not the works are a specic response to the Garden, the artists proposals share the desire to use the exhibition as an opportunity to add to the environmental debate, offering fresh ideas to maintain the momentum of change. The exhibition comes at a key moment in the environmental debate when activism and argument have been replaced instead by a growing sense of resignation to the inevitability of environmental degradation. The facts become more apparent daily but the arguments have already been spelt out and if the public no longer listen, then neither will the politicians. Radical new solutions are needed. In response the exhibition will also see a parallel research programme, organised by Art Happens, Eden Lab and The Eden Project, which sets out to consider opportunities for presenting and dealing with environmental issues through contemporary art practice. Artists change society at a visceral and elemental level. They achieve change by engaging our senses and spreading new ideas as suggestions rather than demands. The current objective of the ecology movement is to change lifestyles and by building an aesthetic that embodies a sound environmental perspective, artists have the potential to provide a channel to communicate at a deeper level than through polemic. The one day conference, Artistic Strategies for the Environment, will consider ways artists contribute to social and environmental change, looking at existing projects and offering fresh, meaningful ideas.

Pertaining to things Natural...

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 signicant 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 scientic 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. DAVID WORTHINGTON [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 widely and 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 signicant social, environmental or economic impact, independent of the art market. EDEN LAB is a creative consultancy set up by Edens former Creative Director Peter Hampel FRSA to take Edens 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 relationship 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

@P2ThingsN

Public Relations: All enquiries please contact Will Paget at Paget PR Telephone: 020 7323 6963, email: hermione@pagetpr.com

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS Owen Bullett Owen has continued making & exhibiting since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2005, and his sculptures are to be found in private collections around the world. Unusual combinations of specic types of wood with metal, paint, resin and electro-luminescent wire create elegant forms that twist through space and interact 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 has previously been included in Sculpture at Glyndebourne (2010) and La Gnrale, Paris (2006). James Capper James Cappers work centres on the design and production of machines, which either have the potential to be used to make marks in their surroundings, or have the autonomous ability to do so. Deconstructing the perceived boundary between functional objects and functionless art, his Ripper Teeth were put into action in an offsite project commissioned by Modern Art Oxford in 2011. He has also exhibited at New Art Centre, Roche Court (2010), The Peckham Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennial (2009), and was joint winner of the Jack Goldhill award for sculpture in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London (2009). Annie Cattrell Annie Cattrells practice is borne out of an ongoing interest in the threshold between art and science, between visible objects and ephemeral ideas or experiences. Working in glass, her delicate objects take natural objects as their subject matter clouds, lungs, rock formations or the retina and she employs new methods of digital scanning to recreate transitory moments as three-dimensional objects. Her work is represented in numerous 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 MA at Goldsmiths College and now lives and works in Gateshead. Interested in subtle manipulations of objects through magnetic elds and the addition of gold leaf to existing structures her delicate interventions into and documentation of unusual phenomena alters the viewers perception of the world. Her work is represented in public and private collections internationally, and recent projects have included commissions for Rio Tinto Alcan, Northumberland (2010) and Tatton Park Biennial, Cheshire (2007) and solo exhibitions at Airspace Gallery, 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 Curries paintings, drawings and sculptures manipulate recognizable Americana and comic book kitsch and poke fun at the twenty-rst centurys nostalgia for this period. Working in a variety of materials, he has shown at Ashwin Street Gallery (2006), Art Frankfurt (2004) and Thebes Gallery, Lewes (2001). He is currently organizing a sculpture park in the grounds of St Lukes Hospice in Plymouth, Devon. Judith Dean Judith Dean has been working and exhibiting internationally for the last 20 years. She creates artworks as a response to her surroundings, altering objects to imbue them with a sense of importance or humour, and creating open-ended narratives that the viewer is encouraged to complete. Current projects include Road for 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 and immaterial labour (2010 present). She won the Jerwood Sculpture Prize in 2005, and her work has been exhibited at Beaconseld, London (2006), the Wordsworth Museum (2006-2007) and Kettles 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 to make these connections explicit in each project, and has worked with numerous specialists in science and technology to realise ephemeral projects as well as lasting objects. He has worked and exhibited internationally, 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 Warr Pavilion, Bexhill (2002). Tessa Farmer The miniscule creatures in Tessa Farmers 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 her tableaux 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 has exhibited 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 areas that would otherwise be overlooked, their sculptural and sonic installations have been installed and exhibited in the UK and abroad, including at Grizedale Forest, Cumbria (2011), The Plaza, Cambridge (2005) and the Victoria & Albert Museum (2003). James P. Graham James P Graham has been working as a ne artist since 2003 after a career in lm and photography. His interest in landscape and the environment focuses specically on the creation of sacred spaces through human ritual and natural alchemy, and his large-scale lm installation Iddu (2007), which captures the extraordinary activity of the active volcano Stromboli, has been exhibited internationally. His work has been shown at the Benaki Museum, Athens (2010), Compton Verney (2010), the Sydney Biennial (2010) and the Muse dArt Moderne 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 lms are both organic and diagrammatic, recording and making visible things that are usually experienced only eetingly. 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, including geological processes and scientic research as part of her practice. Her recent work has focussed on drawing and mapping landscapes and she has created bodies of work on imaginary and existing islands. In 2010 she exhibited at Bradford I Gallery and in 2009 was commissioned by the Natural History Museum to create an installation as a commemoration of Darwins centenary. She has also been included in exhibitions at BALTIC, Gateshead (2009), the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2008), the Hayward Gallery, London (2006) and Compton Verney, Oxfordshire (2005). William Peers William Peers carves most often with marble and with Hornton stone, and until recently focussed on carvings that hang on the wall, in order to place greater emphasis on the surface of the stone and the delicate treatment of its qualities. His freestanding works often explore an area of subject matter which exists somewhere between abstract and gurative poses, but always retain an organic presence. His work was included in Sculpture at Glyndebourne (2011), Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire (2010), Woburn Abbey (2009) and The Armoury Show, New York (2002). Peter Randall-Page During the last 25 years Peter Randall-Pages sculptures, drawings and prints have been exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad. Inspired by shapes and patterns found in naturally occurring objects, his work evokes a 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 exhibited widely, including at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2010), Dulwich Picture Gallery (2010), Eden Project (2007) and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2000).

Michael Shaw Michael Shaws works are digitally mapped using computer-aided design software prior to being manifested in three-dimensional space as thermoformed plastic sculptures, inatable sculptures, chameleon-like light works or animated drawings. These organic shapes invade architectural spaces, reconguring the way they can be inhabited 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 Clapham Picturehouse (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 by mythologizing it. The objects which they collect, alter and display, their lms and their drawings all speak of the hyper-romantic versions of reality captured by artists and storytellers throughout history. They have exhibited widely, including at MoMA PS1, New York (2004), Standpoint Gallery, London (2003) and the Royal British Society of Sculptors (2002). Julian Wild Julian Wilds complex sculptures and drawings are reminiscent of architectural plans whose internal systems 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 work at Burghley House, Lincolnshire (2011), Leighton House Museum, London (2010) and Woburn Abbey (2009). In 2012-13 his sculptures will be installed in Bishops Square, Spitalelds, along with an accompanying exhibition of 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 forms are enormously tactile, encouraging a sense of self as a physical object existing in relation to the sculpture. He has undertaken numerous commissions in the UK and the USA and has exhibited internationally, including at Glyndebourne (2011), The Royal British Society of Sculptors (2009), Woburn Abbey (2009) and Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire (2008).