Cultural Reforesting Exhibition: Find about our artists’ work

C-type photograph, bulldog clips, living oak tree (on view in the gallery at the beginning of the exhibition), gall ink hand-prepared drawings, display case

Ackroyd & Harvey aim to understand the roots of the nature crisis by studying the mythic origin of trees, forests and deforestation. Looking to the future, they explore how cities can adapt to a rapidly warming world through increased tree-planting of biodiverse species.

Their on-going Beuys’ Acorns project began in 2007, with the artists collecting acorns from the environmental artwork 7000 Oaks: City Forestation Instead of City Administration (1982) by Joseph Beuys.

Since 2007, the artists have nurtured the acorns they collected into thriving young trees. They are now planting many circles of seven trees in urban public spaces in partnership with cultural venues across the UK. One of these circles is newly sited on Hampton Common, as a catalyst for biodiversity and as a place for people to meet, convene and create with (and as part of) nature.

The project also includes gall ink drawings and photographs of the acorns bursting to life. Ackroyd & Harvey make the ink from galls collected from the project’s oak trees. Oaks are host plants for more than 70 species of cynipid gall wasps, which induce the plant to produce galls, or growths, which enclose the developing larvae. After the wasps emerge, the artists collect the empty galls and crush them to produce ink. These galls are part of the biodiversity a healthy oak tree supports.

The artists talk about the ‘radicle’ legacy of the Beuys’ Acorns project. (They deliberately use the botanical spelling ‘radicle’, to convey a double meaning of both the ‘primary root’ and a ‘radical’ action.) The project is designed to evolve and continuously benefit the local ecosystem, of both plants and people, for generations to come.

About 7000 Oaks – City Forestation Instead of City Administration (1982) by Joseph Beuys

From 1982 to 1987, Beuys planted 7,000 trees with help from volunteers in Kassel, Germany. He chose oak for its longevity and connections with ancient Celtic folklore. Beuys believed art could be used to inspire social and political change. Seeing 7,000 Oaks as ‘only a symbolic beginning’ he hoped it would encourage people to plant trees across the world.

About Ackroyd & Harvey

Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey are internationally acclaimed for creating works that intersect art, activism, architecture, biology, ecology and history. Their time-based practice reveals an intrinsic bias towards process and event. Processes of germination, growth and decay (organic and inorganic) feature in artworks that often evolve through extended research in response to people and place, interfacing their profound interest in local ecologies and global planetary concerns.

They give high profile keynotes and public presentations and contribute writings and photographs to books and journals. In 2019, the artists co-founded Culture Declares Emergency in response to the climate and ecological emergency.

U K’ux Kaj / Heart of sky, Mayan god of storms, 2023-25 

Four-channel video (10 mins): timber, screens

Ah-Muzen-Cab / Protector of the Xunan kaab (Stingless Melipona beecheii), Yucatán, 2023 

Photograph

Artist Mónica Alcázar-Duarte draws on indigenous knowledge systems from the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico, which in turn prioritise the knowledge that plants and animals carry. Bees – and their knowledge – are central to Mónica’s work in this exhibition.

The film itself is housed in a structure with a shape reminiscent of a honeycomb cell.

For Mayan civilisations, the stingless Xunan kaab bee linked humans and the spirit world, and its honey served important medicinal and nutritional purposes.

As worlds are destroyed and reborn, the artist urges to reach for the expertise and intelligence that we’re at risk of losing from both our human ancestors and from other species. The film may represent the beginning of the world, engulfed in flames before its birth, or serve as a warning, urging us to question the knowledge systems we choose to follow in order to prevent destruction.

Driftwood, shells, crustacean carcasses, mould, wood glue, copper wire and other debris collected from the River Thames.

Ama Josephine Budge has been walking beside the River Thames, thinking about the water as a site of history, haunting and possibility. Ama reconsiders who has access to green spaces of beauty and reflection, as well as whose histories and dead are honoured and remembered here. We are all entangled in reimagining the stories we tell about this great river and our place along its banks.

During her walks beside the river, Ama collected its debris to create a series of sculptural anti-monuments. These anti-monuments honour the stories of those who arrived upon its shores by force, those that came filled with dreams and those for whom the Thames is still a sacred passage between past, present and future.

Ama collaborated with artists, writers and ecological practitioners on this project. Her research is in partnership with St Mary’s University, Twickenham and the Being Human Festival.

About the artist

Ama Josephine Budge is a British-Ghanaian speculative writer, artist, curator and pleasure activist. Her practice navigates  queer explorations of race, art, ecology and feminism. Ama’s installation, written and video art works have been commissioned, exhibited and published internationally.

Letter to the Thames

Dear Dark River,

I want to start with an apology.

I’m sorry that you have been made to hold so much darkness, waste, toxicity, plastic, metal, boat carcasses, uncounted bones, unremembered dead. I’m sorry you have been made to hold so much without even being asked permission. Many humans, all over the world, like to build things so that our descendants will remember that we existed. That we dreamed. That we reached. I do not know if ants ask permission of the mud before building their towering temple-like halls, but I know that over the centuries you have been revered as sacred. I know that wishes have been sent, prayers for fertility and good harvest beseeched, offerings made.

I know that you are ancient and that your memory is long. That you remember the mudmen who lived beside you, who roamed your waters in animal-skin boats. That you remember the flavour of tanned hides, pulled taught, and the warm feel of beating bodies within them. I know that you have seen sieges, bridges built and fallen, whales and dolphins lost on their way from the ocean, dinosaur bellies caressing your silty beds, diving deep, their bones kept safe under clay, and rock and water and soil. I imagine that you remember the first time you tasted sugar, cacao and oranges as they slipped from barrels and crates and sacks, plunging to ferment and rot and fecundate your cradle. I wonder if you remember the blood that soaked those wooden boards, uncleansed by the salt of the Atlantic, hauntings rather seared into grain and hollow. I wonder if you distinguished those as offerings, I wonder if you took your due, speeding trade along your estuaries, I wonder if you too – like the Atlantic – could have chosen to bury some of those boats instead.

We know that you are rising. That just as you cannot contain all that we continue to slew into your waters – out of site, out of mind; under murk, kind for kind – we cannot contain your multitudes nor your currents. Like the histories buried deep, you too are bursting your banks, refusing to be silenced, to be dammed, to be made timid or pastoral.

Many poets and writers think of you as the best of Englishness. As John Denham once penned:

“deep yet clear,

though gentle yet not dull,

strong without rage,

without overflowing full”

and I must confess that the revolutionary in me revels in your refusal of this docile yet domineering persona. There is nothing civilised or civilising about water. It reminds us who and what we are.

So when I came to think about what I might build in order to be remembered, I thought instead of what I might gather in order to honour you. I collected your remains, digested, regurgitated and fondled ephemera. I spent time getting you under my fingernails and becoming attuned to feeling unclean. I did not discriminate against metal, or wood, clay, feather or twine, crustacean, bone or mulch. I attempted to honour them and insodoing to honour you, in all your darkness. I attempted to reckon with all the darkness we have created together. The darkness my ancestors bled for, and fed from both. Like you, I attempted to traverse both backward and forth, to travel through tales and time.

I offer to you now, an anti-monument. Made not to withstand your currents but to return to them. To drift and tumble and be disassembled. As your waters rise to remake this dark world, I offer you fodder from which to dream and sculpt. I stand here submerged, shivering, in prayer, dreaming and sculpting too.

Album – materials list TBC

Nature Sings is a new album by Finn Chatwyn-Ros, created for families to enjoy together. Each song is influenced by babies and toddlers in the family workshops Finn leads at the gallery, Finn’s own daughter’s interactions with nature, and the gallery’s ecosystem – the woodland, the Octagon Room, the river.

The songs support adults in introducing their little ones to concepts of taking care of our shared planet. Children are seeing sunlight on clouds for the first time, smelling plants for the first time, crunching on gravel for the first time. The album helps children to make sense of and fully engage in these sensory experiences that our planet gives us. Songs like ‘Chasing the Moon’ encourage children to be attuned to the world while ‘The Planet We Live On’ teaches them the importance of taking care of the world.

Finn hopes this album shifts the perspective for grownups to see the ‘magic of nature’ through children’s eyes. The songs are intended to be for families, not just for children. Finn explores how inter-generational exchange enables adults to renew their relationship with nature through their children.

Album illustrations by Sonia Kenny.

About the artist

Finn is a trained primary school teacher; specialising in the Early Years and in Music Education. She has taught in schools, nurseries, music hubs, libraries and community centres, as well as festivals and parties. Finn is the founder of Crescendo which has been running since 2011 and provides quality, tailored music sessions across London. The organisation also runs post-natal music sessions, baby classes and toddler classes in South London.  She believes passionately in the importance of music for the youngest of our children.

Finn is artist-in-residence at Orleans House Gallery, leading the Curious Tots workshops. Designed for babies and pre-walking toddlers, Curious Tots is a sensory musical session that uses puppets, instruments, and creative activities to explore, play and imagine. Finn explores Cultural Reforesting through these sessions, focusing on the natural world around us and how we can renew our relationship with it.

Aluminium, steel, sand, recycled acrylic, metal leaf, tracing paper, pencil, acrylic ink, glazing medium, satin medium, acrylic pen, acrylic paint, artist’s breath, artist’s body, studio dust particles, sunlight

My Body is a Sundial is a conversation between two bodies held too close. Human and celestial bodies, ricocheting, raging and merging between hot cities of glass, asphalt and steel. The sculpture invites you to step inside the organic, ancestral, sensorial container of the artist, suspended between the rejection and recovery of her relationship with our closest star.

‘As the heart of our solar system moves through my mid-afternoon body, a body that dreams of dawn as dusk draws closer, the intense pressures of heat, clock-time, uncanny seasons and narrow sightlines of how to live well, here, now, surface. Yet, subtle movements and minute noticings   here, too. Re-membering my ancestral patterns. Rescuing my childhood awe. Stirring empathy for a body that has accompanied me throughout. One that is also trapped in these cities. One that is also fuel for systems distorting our evolutionary cycles.’ – Bryony Ella

Inspired by the international environmental history project Melting Metropolis, which studies the lived experience and climate   of urban heat islands, My Body is a Sundial engages the sun in embodied dialogue as it visits the project’s research cities (and the artist’s ancestral lands) of London, New York, and Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Expressing the tension between yearning to live in a state of reverence for the sun and the dangers of extreme urban heat, fleeting moments of clarity illuminate the bright intensity of solar power, wisdom and warning. We are holding the sun too close, and yet we need the sun, we evolved with the sun, our bodies contain the sun. My Body is a Sundial asks; whose stories need to be felt now, and can we release them in time?

Bryony’s research into our relationship with the sun is also influenced by her Cultural Reforesting residency through her ‘Wild Drawing’ practice. She spent three months in the Orleans House Gallery grounds researching the practice of drawing of, with and as part of nature and in participation with others. She suspended canvas hangings between trees in our woodland and painted the light and shadows as they moved with brush and found natural objects.

My Body is a Sundial is commissioned by Melting Metropolis, a Wellcome Discovery Award project at the University of Liverpool.

About the artist

Bryony Ella is a British-Trinidadian artist working with an embodied ecology practice, in the liminal space between science and spirituality.

Her interdisciplinary work brings together different cosmologies and perspectives that seek to move us beyond human-defined borders and binaries, broadening our definition of belonging and community. My Body is a Sundial emerged from ongoing field work with Melting Metropolis researchers in London, New York and Port of Spain, Trinidad, and develops her ‘wild drawing’ practice, explored during a Cultural Reforesting residency at Orleans House Gallery in 2022.

Series of sculptural and collage artworks created from material remnants left behind after workshops with families during 2024: cardboard, paper, fabric, paint, pencil, ink, soil, printed papers, masking tape, thread, string, wool rubber bands, metal clips, wooden sculptural ‘liminal’ plinths, re-purposed Perspex

Abigail Hunt leads our Play:Make:Art Early Years programme, curating objects and environments to encourage playful responses from children and their accompanying adults. In both her own visual art practice and in the facilitation of workshops, she is interested in the responsibility we all have in using materials. What happens to the new objects and artworks we make after a workshop or event?

Abigail’s practice holds unresolved questions. She is a maker of objects and an artist who values the haptic experience of holding and experiencing objects. While she struggles with the idea of waste, she also believes strongly in encouraging creativity and making, and she knows that to do this without materials would be impossible.

Abigail carefully selects materials for the Play:Make:Art workshops that are already repurposed or can be re-used and adapted for continued use. Despite this careful thinking and planning, art-making workshops in their very nature still generate waste and remnants left behind. Art workshops often even make recyclable materials difficult to recycle. When we add paint or tape, attach materials to other materials and cut them up into small pieces, they become un-recyclable.

For the Cultural Reforesting exhibition, Abigail collected remnants leftover from Play:Make:Art sessions that would otherwise be thrown away. She took them back to her own studio to explore their continued potential and usability, incorporating them into her own artworks. Collaged works, reappropriated drawings and sculptural remnants are displayed as static moments which pause to reflect on the making processes reminiscent of both Play:Make:Art and the artist’s studio.

Map printed on paper

Families in the Forest is an interactive experience for families to explore the Orleans House grounds through a series of encounters with inhabitants past and present. Each stop on the Families in the Forest tour combines meditative and imaginative activities to encourage meaningful and creative interaction between families and the environment. It aims to promote both care and play, offering a version of environmental stewardship that is appealing to all ages.

Families in the Forest was written and delivered by writer and theatre maker, Adam Kammerling and heritage and cultural producer Jessica Ihejetoh. In all weathers the full tour was delivered to children from the ages 1-10 and their adults, engaging them with the ancient woods alongside the gallery. This artwork and record of the tour was created in collaboration with Holly Thomas, a London based illustrator inspired by play and the natural world.

Photograph, frame, video (14 min), monitor, USB stick, Putney Heath, Simon Ellis, Digital Camera, Tripod, Microphone, Council staff members, Heather, Fresh air, An inquisitive crow

kin·ship n. Relationship by nature, character, affinity or common origin

Kinship Workshop is a seasonal programme that invites participants into wilder landscapes. Participants spend unhurried time in, and as part of, nature. They explore connection to land and other living beings through simple embodiment exercises.

Artists Katye Coe and Tom Goodwin (creators and co-facilitators) developed a workplace-friendly Kinship training with Richmond & Wandsworth Councils. Though the training, council staff explore their relationship to nature. The training reflects on personal and collective wellbeing and responses to climate change and environmental degradation. It looks at how embodied practices in nature might bring nature-centred thinking and wellbeing into organisational structures.

The film by Simon Ellis documents the experience of 18 council staff members who embarked on a 10-week nature-centred wellbeing programme exploring relationship to nature, place and themselves.

About the artists

Kinship Workshop facilitator and founder Tom Goodwin has a background in various movement practices and somatic trainings, and has extensive experience in teaching and facilitation.

Kinship Workshop draws from his experiences of spending time with other animals both in sanctuaries and through wild and domestic encounters. He completed an internship at The Kerulos Center in 2014 studying trans-species psychology and self-determination from which he developed the material included in Kinship Workshop.

Katye Coe has been involved with Kinship Workshop since 2016 and joined as a facilitator in 2018. Katye is a dancer, performer and teacher working collaboratively in the UK and internationally. Katye is a certified Skinner Releasing Technique teacher and has completed 4 years of site and movement work in Helen Poynor’s Walk of Life Programme.  She is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.

Katye grew up on a farm and later worked extensively alongside horses. Her intention in the context of Kinship Workshops relates to the importance of understanding and embracing the ‘right relationship’ with nature, yourself and others.

Seed sculptures (compost, powdered clay, seeds and plants: Marsh Mallow, Borage, Feverfew, St. John’s Wort, Lemon Balm, Marigold, Sweet Fennel, Musk Mallow, Tansy, Mugwort, Meadow Cranesbill, Roman Chamomile), soil, sunlight, water

As humans, we rely on plants. Yet the relationship between humans and plants is strained with by current food systems. Let us rethink these systems and re-engage with the time when we wandered the forest for food rather than supermarket aisles. Let us embrace a symbiotic relationship between people and plants, looking after each other.

With playful seed sculptures shaped like familiar supermarket products, Andrew Merritt’s flowerbeds are a proposal for turning supermarkets into ecosystems instead of extractive systems. The seed sculptures will slowly decompose, losing their supermarket shape as the seeds within them germinate and grow. These flowerbeds are prototypes for vast ecosystems, providing sustenance not only for humans but also for soil, worms, insects, birds, the plants and more.

Andrew uses supermarkets as a starting point to rethink how we get our daily needs. His work featured in a solo exhibition Superm̶a̶r̶k̶e̶t̶Forest at Orleans House Gallery in 2023.

Andrew’s work is a collaboration with ethnobotanists, artists, ecologists, farmers, and the forest itself. A special thanks to the volunteers and community members who helped build the seed sculptures.

About the artist
Andrew Merritt’s work explores social and environmental issues via everyday scenarios criss-crossing the boundaries between the visual arts, architecture and activism. Through permanent installations, functional sculptures and public performances, projects provide a framework or foundation for communities and ecologies to build upon. Works mimic the everyday to act as familiar starting point and then take the subject into new realms. Andrew is one half of the artist duo Something & Son.

Something & Son have exhibited at Tate Britain; Tate Modern; V&A Museum; South London Gallery, Manchester International Festival; Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Deon Foundation, Netherlands; Vienna Biennale/MAK; Artangel; Milan Design Week; FACT, Liverpool; Cultural Olympia; Somerset House; Folkestone Art Triennial; Design Museum; Royal Botanical Gardens Kew; the Wellcome Collection; Istanbul Design Biennial,

Current long-term projects by Andrew Merritt include Intertidal Allotment, which takes inspiration from the traditional allotment form and expands it into the intertidal zone; and Field Hospital, a multinational project starting in the UK and Mexico. Field Hospital will act as nurseries for slow disasters – a term Andrew conceived to describe areas of land that have been destroyed over centuries and in increasing ferocity.

Everyday materials from the studios of Vicky Long and Eloise Moody, situated in 4 stations through the gallery.

Vicky Long and Eloise Moody came across this question at the National Physics Laboratory, Teddington, during their Cultural Reforesting research residency in 2021.

For this exhibition, the pair have explored a new way of working together – a ‘Postal Conversation’. Each made an artwork in response to the question and posted it to the other. They continued to make artworks and post them with written correspondence up to the opening of Cultural Reforesting. Artworks were made quickly, in response to what was received and always in the context of the question.

Woven into this fresh work is their research into measurement and accuracy, supported by the National Physics Laboratory. Their exploration of Orleans House, its grounds and the Richmond Borough Art Collection is present, and the exchange also connects to their wider, individual practices.

Vicky and Eloise see this work as an ongoing dialogue, with a research question that, in some way, involves us all… There is the opportunity to join the conversation, by following the artworks through the gallery to Study Room on the upper floor.

About the artist

Vicky Long and Eloise Moody first worked together when they created Colourfield for Kew Wakehurst in 2018. This was a participatory work, commissioned by Shrinking Space and Kew Gardens, sponsored by Winsor & Newton. Colourfield was also part of Remember the Future at Orleans House Gallery in 2020.

Following this, Vicky and Eloise took up a Research residency at Orleans House as well as leading Let’s Get Creative workshops on site.

Their individual practices feed into the work they make jointly.

Vicky Long’s practice is concerned with people and place, and the dynamic of that relationship over time. Projects often explore systems and structures that underpin daily life, as well as the lively interplay between rational and instinctive behaviours. She has created multi-disciplinary projects for organisations including Eden Project, Cape Farewell, Stories of Change & AHRC, Falling Tree & BBC Radio 4, TFL & the Boroughs of Lambeth & Wandsworth, Vauxhall BID, Art Night, Ranan & Pickle Factory, Live & Breathe Clean Air Campaign.

Eloise Moody is a multi–disciplinary artist/maker. Her work investigates time, memory, absence and belonging through socially engaged practice. Working with specific groups of people; from security guards and nuns to archaeologists and physicists, she helps to uncover and document moments of beauty, translating them into finely made artworks that often go back into the public realm. She has worked with BBC Radio 4, The Museum of London, Kettles Yard, Metal, the Art Lending Library, UCL, The London Wetland Centre and Pitt Rivers amongst others. She has received ACE Funding for multiple projects.

Local haylage and timber coppiced from the Orleans House Gallery woodlands

The Reapers features five sculptures made from ferment local hay (or haylage, normally used as a high protein easily digestible cattle feed) and coppiced timber from the Orleans House Gallery woodlands. This matter has been shaped into deteriorated haystack-like forms. Standing over five metres high, these temporal sculptures will change in colour, transform, grow, decay, and eventually compost over time, challenging the conventional idea of permanence in sculpture.

‘In gaming circles Reapers are a synthetic-organic alien race, connecting us to the fear we share of the mutant monsters sure to come from human techno meddling in plant biology. The literal meaning of ‘reapers’ is someone, usually a farmer, who harvests crops, apt for the material the works are made from, and as portraits of the punk spirit of the farmers I have met and drawn. These are portraits of revolutionary pioneers at the new frontier. And of course, ‘reapers’ also has a darker, religious and horror infused undertone, and these dark angels do loom somewhat in the landscape, reminding us of a future we hope to avoid. – Ivan Morison

The Reapers were produced as part of the artist’s research residency Towards the Weird Heart of Things with the Sainsbury Centre and Orleans House Gallery. The residency looked at the parallels between artists and farmers, searching out farmers operating at the radical edge of agriculture today. Engaging local farming communities, the works prompt a reassessment of our connection to the natural world. They cast light on the agricultural sector’s reliance on drugs and pesticides, inviting contemplation on sustainability and regenerative farming practices that nourish soil and spirit.

‘For this commission I am thinking about the radical with regard to the rural context. The rural, as opposed to the urban, has a huge role to play with regards to climate change mitigation and habitat loss or restitution. I’m thinking of the future of agricultural practices and particularly how these need to change. This is a radical space, where traditions, communities, models of finance and individuals behaviours will all need to shift, and the people who are doing this are the radicals, the real punks of today. I’m so pleased to have been able to meet and spend time with a few of these radicals as part of this larger project, all approaching this problem from different amazing inspiring ways.

I have been asked whether my work is radical – I don’t think so, I think it’s very old fashioned. I am looking for things to hand, trying to shorten the journey from material to artwork, trying to take out industrialised processes where possible. In this situation, with the Reapers series, making perhaps the most basic of sculptural forms – the pile or mound of stuff. And trying to do this in a joyful, shared way, like we used to do as kids playing and making in an unselfconscious way. Trying to create works that through their weird energies re-connect us to ourselves and our environment. That’s art at its most basic. Art as an action to be acted upon, not art as an unchanging object.’ – Ivan Morison

Two wall posters, UV gel (applied to the light fixtures)

In 2023, Richmond Council’s planning department invited artists Kim Coleman and Harun Morrison to carry out a research project addressing light pollution. The UK experiences excess light pollution. Many of the borough’s green spaces are intentionally left to be ‘dark corridors’ to avoid unnecessary artificial light that can disturb protected species like bats. However, choosing whether to light parks and open spaces is contentious: for many who use these spaces to walk dogs, commute to and from work, and for leisure, darkness can compromise their ability to use and enjoy the environment. The council also needs to ensure community safety.

The council’s planning department chose to commission artists, as opposed to other researchers, in the hope they would approach research and share findings in novel ways that would engage policymakers.

This document is the result of a year-long research project by Kim and Harun. It is designed to give policy-makers insights into needs for darkness in urban space.

PLA, stainless steel and wood

Video (runtime: 5mins), Monitor, USB stick and headphones

Bats are keystone and indicator species. They regulate insect populations and offer valuable insights into ecosystem health. Despite their ecological benefits, bats tend to be socially stigmatised, partly due to their nocturnal habits and storytelling portrayals.

The work that artist Nestor Pestana presents is a prototype for an architectural sculpture designed for and with bats. The sculpture itself would be 5 meters high and stand in the Orleans House Gallery woodland. Ovum is not only an artwork, but realised in its full size, would function as a maternity roost for female pipistrelle bats and their pups.

To ensure the design meets the needs of these bats, Stephanie Holt from the Natural History Museum has provided expert guidance, assisting as well with a bat survey to gather data on pipistrelle populations and identify the optimal location for the sculpture. The main body of the sculpture is black to help retain heat and create a suitable roosting environment. Its egg-like shape contains an internal structure designed for maternity roosting, optimising airflow and offering different conditions for winter and summer. Six small entry slots allow bats to access the interior while protecting them from predators. The sculpture will be positioned 5 metres above the ground, enabling bats to drop and take flight, which is part of their take-off behaviour. Holes at the base ensure the structure remains self-cleaning.

The name and shape of the sculpture are inspired by mythological and sci-fi narratives. The mythological motif of the cosmic egg is found in many cultures, including Chinese, Dogon, Greek, and Hindu traditions, often describing an entity hatching from an egg and giving birth to the universe. In sci-fi, eggs are a recurring symbol of horror, where otherworldly, visceral, and incomprehensible entities emerge – often to be feared, hunted, and eradicated.

Ovum reimagines these narratives, offering a safe haven for the othering and for the monsters, and a call for the creation of a new kind of world – one shaped by the prefix multi: multi-species, multi-identity, multi-materiality.

About the artist

Nestor Pestana is a Venezuelan-Portuguese multimedia artist based in London. He is a tutor and researcher in the Master’s programmes in Information Experience Design at the Royal College of Art, and in Cinematic and Videogame Architecture MA at University College London.

Through his multimedia art and research practice, Nestor engages in collaborations with scientists and technologists, focusing on two overlapping areas of interest. The first deals with cultural ecologies, particularly in relation to bats, exploring their cultural associations and narrative portrayals in cinema and gaming. The second involves historical archives combined with AI technologies, to investigate potential human-machine collaborations in creating stories and to explore inherent opportunities and ethical challenges.

Through worldbuilding, speculative design, and storytelling, Nestor creates immersive multimedia installations using moving image, illustrations, and sculptural artifacts to engage audiences actively and critically with complex contemporary issues.

His work has been recognised and awarded by the Royal College of Art, Wellcome Trust, Ars Electronica and the YouFab Global Creative Awards.