The Nature Collections
Bees for Development
It is a great honour for Alex’s artwork to be chosen as the front of the invitation for the Garden Party which is held Bi-annually at Marlborough House on Pall Mall by kind permission from Her Majesty.
Bees For Development is a charity supported by famous media personalities - and amateur beekeepers - Bill Turnbull and Martha Kearney, which promotes economic development in countries across the globe through cultivation of bees.
For the first time this year there will be an original bee-art ‘surprise’ sale where guests will choose bee postcards done by famous artists and celebrities where the names will be released after the card is chosen. Also at the Garden Party “Beetrice”, a 4-foot ‘Manchester Bee’ made in fibre glass that Alex has painted, will be unveiled, ready to go to live in the Mansion House in the City of London, the home of the Lord Mayor of London.
“Tipping Point”
The Tipping Point is an ongoing creation of artworks that offer you an encounter with nature, one that reconnects you with the importance of biodiversity through the eyes of bees.
This collection ‘Tipping Point’ is an art & science project. Alex’s work reflects scientific research at Cambridge University about the relationship between flowering plants and pollinating insects that comes to life in UV colours.
Through the eyes of Bees, we start to see the attraction they have to the flower. Alex's art pulls us ever closer to the deeper message to wake up to the desperate time we find our ecosystem in. Her collection, ‘Tipping Point’ is inspired by the 17th Century Dutch flower paintings from the Broughton Collection of The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Each month last year you could find Alex sketching in the rooms with her easel an honour not bestowed upon many. Now she’s bringing this project together with The Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton who are working on the genome sequencing of many endangered insects and animals in the UK. They have been generous in sharing the first-ever DNA structure of the Red Mason Bee to support Alex in her project.
The rich colour is not how humans see flowers, the materials are playful and interactive. Her unique work uses UV paint to cultivate an experience of the unseen world of the bee.
Alex wishes her work to be thought-provoking and is motivated from a place that desires to share a story that will inspire action to protect and enhance the environment.
A Right Royal Buzz
In 2015-2016 Alex was appointed as the first ever artist in Residence for The Royal Parks, London working in partnership with The Mall Galleries and the National Gallery.
The project of workshops and events culminated in a triple exhibition we named “A Right Royal Buzz,” and it was held simultaneously over the three sites: The Mall Galleries, National gallery and Duck Island Cottage on HorseGuards Parade where Alex exhibited her work.
As the artist in residence Alex was fortunate to be able to learn about recent research from the eminent scientist Professor Beverley Glover at the Plant Science Department at Cambridge University.
She used this research working with multiple groups for this project, a nursery school, family groups, an intergenerational group and free drop-in art sessions held outside in St James Park in November and January taking no notice of the weather!
The project allowed participants and different groups to explore the importance of pollination and the unique way that bees see flowers.
The work was to understand and to witness the significance of biodiversity through the interaction with insects and plants.
Inside the Duck Island Cottage Alex put on a solo installation in the rarely opened Duck Island Cottage, positioned between the back of the garden of No 10 and the large pond with Pelicans that reaches down to Buckingham Palace. This total immersion installation took the visitor around the story she created using artworks such as prints, paintings, and ceramics as well as flowers she had grown, all signposted to go on a bee journey around this tiny room.
Alex imagined this room was lived in by an old beekeeper and gardener who understood the balance between the bee and the garden and the harmony it brings through looking after both. At the end of the exhibition the viewer could be rewarded (even the civil servants and politicians who came to see the space!) with a tasty stick of honey drawn from the bees hives in the Royal Parks, but only if the viewer entered the game and wrote a pledge to grow a bee kind flower.
Outside Duck Island Cottage is a four-foot beehive made from ceramic tiles, with a bug hotel on the reverse. The tiles have been designed by an intergenerational collaboration between students from Harris Westminster Sixth Form and members of locally based ETAT (Encouragement Through the Arts and Talking).
Following this Alex was invited to show her latest series of prints at Hauser and Wirth in Somerset for a Beekeeping exhibition in 2017.