Marc Quinn's Light into Life: an 'al fresco treasure-hunt' of sculpture at Kew

The natural beauty of Kew Gardens is being lit up by an installation of "manically botanical" giant sculptures by Marc Quinn, said Time Out. 

The former Young British Artist's new show explores the "links between nature and humanity", said the site, and how plants and people co-exist in an "untangleable symbiotic relationship". 

Quinn has long been regarded as one of the "bad boys of British culture", said The Independent, and his works have included some of the most "controversial representations of the human form of the past half-century", including "Self", a cast of his head made from his frozen blood. So entering this horticultural world could be seen as a "mellowing move, even a nod towards middle England".

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But Quinn told the paper that he had been "creating images related to horticulture and nature since the early 1990s". The earliest of the sculptures on display, in a freezer installation in Kew's Shirley Sherwood Gallery, is "The Origin of the Species". The 1993 artwork was created by filling his "blood head" mould with frozen coconut water – "replacing my blood with the 'blood' of a plant", he said.

The show also features another evolution of Quinn's "famous experiments with blood", said The Telegraph. "Human Nature" (2024) is a bouquet of calla lilies cast in frozen animal blood, which is commercially available as a fertiliser – a commentary on the "sale of death".

But where this show really shines is through his large metallic sculptures dotted across Kew's gardens like an "al fresco treasure hunt" of "sculptural delights". Quinn's "highly reflective" creations "follow in the best traditions of English landscaping's use of reflective water bodies". Some are placed "in plain sight with a distorted mirroring effect that casts back the greenery and facades of Kew", while others "appear to float in a dully shimmering communion between plant and sky". 

Presenting an "entertaining development" in the history of sculptures in gardens, this installation takes a "radically different" approach to the tradition. Rather than drawing the eye away from nature and "into midday reveries of romping satyrs", Quinn "redoubles your immersion into the natural surroundings", creating an "entrancing portal to the world contained within the reflection".

"Marc Quinn: Light Into Life" is at Kew Gardens until 29 September; kew.org