WHAT?  Mat Collishaw: Petrichor 

WHERE?  Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Kew Gardens, Richmond, TW9 3AE

WHEN?  Now until 7th April 2024 

WHY GO?  For bewitching botanics. You will inevitably surrender to your senses with contemporary artist Collishaw’s take on the botanical world, which is more sci-fi dystopian than cute cottage garden.

This inspirational exhibition is far removed from the delicate floral watercolours that generally feature in Kew’s much loved botanical art gallery and has the ‘wow’ factor for originality. 

It’s an inventive mash-up of floral art, science and digital tech and creates botanical art magic that is more than a little bit unsettling.

If the aim is to alert us to the gradual degeneration of our planet then it makes a spirited show of alerting us to just that.

Collishaw has created illusionary images of nature where plucky insects swarm around floral sprays and ghostly trees are distorted through disease. 

Nature and AI merge in the premiere of six new artworks inspired by Renaissance master of botany, Albrecht Durer and they are stunning.  Collishaw reverses the relationship of flowers and insects, empowering them to take the lead and pollinate. Constance Spry would be horrified!

This is definitely no Garden of Eden, but it is one of the most compelling botanical shows ever exhibited at Kew and addresses the way we perceive nature through art .

IN THE KNOW:  Trees being much in the news of late, highlights the significance of Collishaw’s ghostly hologram of the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest which is a major focus of the exhibition.  He repurposes Victorian conjuring trickery to magic it into a phantom known as the Pepper’s Ghost illusion.  

Our infatuation with wizardry endures!