Artists @ Pertaining to things natural

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 specific 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 Générale, Paris (2006).

James Capper

James Capper’s 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 Cattrell’s 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 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 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 Currie’s paintings, drawings and sculptures manipulate recognizable Americana and comic book kitsch and poke fun at the twenty-first century’s 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 fine artist since 2003 after a career in film and photography. His interest in landscape and the environment focuses specifically on the creation of sacred spaces through human ritual and natural alchemy, and his large-scale film 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 Musée d’Art 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 films are both organic and diagrammatic, recording and making visible things that are usually experienced 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, including geological processes and scientific 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 Darwin’s 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 figurative 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).

Keith Rand

Natural forms, landscapes and the human form inspire the three-dimensional forms and installations created by Keith Rand. He explores the tension between surface and space, carving timber blocks into delicate planes and undulating curves. He was made and Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy and his work has been acquired for collections in the UK, USA, Japan and Europe. Recent exhibitions include the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (2011), Winchester Cathedral (2011), and Mompesson House, Salisbury (2009).

Peter Randall

During the last 25 years Peter Randall-Page’s 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 Shaw’s works are digitally mapped using computer-aided design software prior to being manifested in three-dimensional space as thermoformed plastic sculptures, inflatable sculptures, chameleon-like light works or animated drawings. These organic shapes invade architectural spaces, reconfiguring 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).

Cathy Ward & Eric 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 films and their drawings all speak of the hyper-romantic versions of reality captured by artists and storytellers throughout history. They have worked and exhibited internationally, including Galerie Toxic, Luxembourg (2012) Aspex, Portsmouth (2009), Torrence Art Museum, California (2009), JMKAC, Wisconsin (2006) Cafe Gallery Projects, London (2005) MoMA PS1, NY (2004) CLUI, Utah (2004)

Julian Wild

Julian Wild’s 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, Spitalfields, along with an accompanying exhibition of maquettes and drawings in the foyer of Allen and Overy.

Hugo Wilson

The works of poisonous plants made out of the antidotal plant that grown within ten metres of it. The antidotal plant dries and then ground into oil using the traditional methods of paint making. I am interested in this as a demonstration of the existence of a "higher plan".

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).