Botanical Art in the 21st Century
Sat 08 February - Sun 10 August 2014Contemporary botanical art from the Shirley Sherwood Collection, including work from Italian artists never previously exhibited in the UK, and featuring paintings from 'Overleaf' by Susan Ogilvy, and 'Magnolias' by Barbara Oozeerally
Sono stata invitata, insieme ad altri artisti italiani, a questa magnifica mostra, sono molto contenta che un mio lavoro venga ospitato nella galleria più prestigiosa del Regno Unito che si occupa di Arte Botanica.
La Galleria è , credo, l'unica nel mondo che espone esclusivamente arte botanica ed è stata voluta dalla collezionista inglese Shirley Sherwood.
Sopra -"Musa 2 " - particolare - acquerello su carta - l'ultimo mio lavoro
About the exhibition
This new exhibition, ‘Botanical Art in the 21st Century’, will celebrate the remarkable, worldwide renaissance of botanical art today. Recently acquired works in the Shirley Sherwood Collection will illustrate both traditional and new painting techniques. The exhibition will demonstrate the breadth and depth of botanical art, where fresh approaches and technical advances are changing the idea of what botanical art is about.
‘Botanical Art in the 21st Century’ is a modification of an exhibition mounted last year in Pisa, Italy, in the Museo della Grafica, called ‘Botanical Art into the Third Millennium’. Alongside the Shirley Sherwood Collection there will be a selection of recent works by Italian artists on display, some of which were painted specially for the Pisa show and many have never been exhibited in the UK before.
Many of the artists in the exhibition from the Shirley Sherwood Collection were born from 1950 onwards and a few only came to botanical art very recently. These artists are continuing a very long tradition of botanical art and this exhibition will illustrate how artists are using different media and new techniques to develop the genre into the 21st century. Artists such as Beverly Allen, Sarah Graham and Sue Herbert are painting either life-size or vastly magnifying subjects and other artists in the exhibition are developing the design and compositions of their paintings.
These new practices will also be exhibited alongside paintings using more established techniques and more traditional in their approach, examples will include works on vellum by Rory McEwen and Kate Nessler and copper-plate etchings coloured by Bryan Poole using the technique a la poupée in a similar fashion to that of Joseph Pierre Redouté.
Many areas of botanical art are undergoing exciting changes and this new exhibition aims to showcase how exciting the future is for botanical art.
Shirley Sherwood Gallery - Kew Gardens - London