Ben Sanderson
I’m a visual artist with a studio at CAST, in Helston, Cornwall. My works develop slowly, attuned to the seasons, embracing cyclical processes of growth & decay. I work in painting, drawing & textiles, often returning to, and transforming work. Monotypes on paper are echoed in printed elements appearing on canvas; canvas is sewn & patched back together, or mulched to become rag paper, becoming a ground for new painting.
In 2021 I had my first solo show at Kestle Barton, Cornwall. The exhibition grew from three years visiting Trebah Gardens on the Helford River. During this time, I organised garden walks with specialists (an ethnobotanical researcher, gardeners, a psychiatrist, a herbalist, artists & poets) to discuss the space between people and plants. These conversations informed my work and have left me questioning what happens at the garden’s edge.
When watching the garden, it often became a metaphor for society. A well-kept edge, a ditch, weeds, a wildflower, the potted, the garden flower. Since my time at Trebah, I have become fascinated by the ways that rogue, uncultivated, uninvited species meet and mix with the carefully selected ones. Systems of power and oppression are echoed in the garden; naming, categorising, cultivating, displacing, collecting, weeding. The flowers in the work aren’t meant to be garden flowers, they are the ones that live in the cracks of the pavement and that are crawling up the walls.
Helping Artists Keep Going
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