BIODIVERSITY: Kurt Jackson

Biodiversity exhibition featuring Kurt Jackson

3 FEBRUARY – 15 MAY 2022

SPECIAL EXHIBITION

FREE ENTRY

 

Bringing together the celebrated art of Kurt Jackson with reflections from Oxford University researchers, this exhibition explored biodiversity across British landscapes and considered the future of our country's habitats.

 

 

 

ABOUT BIODIVERSITY

 

 

 

 

Daddy long legs by Kurt Jackson
Cropped version of Hogweed Visitors, a painting by Kurt Jackson of bees in a hogweed plant.

Biodiversity is the variety of life. 

Each natural habitat has its own distinctive biodiversity – from fields and forests to seas and streams, and the increasingly urban places where we live.

In this video, Kurt Jackson explains how biodiversity impacts his art and art-making. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/embed/bGvw73bNAb0

 

 

Whilst Painting on a Cliff

- Kurt Jackson

 

A carpet of canvas
To dance and prance upon
Laid upon a cliff
To fling my colours on
My splatters and sweeps
Above the tides
The springs and neaps
A slab of sea
Beneath my feet
And spread before me
To gradually realise
This world around
Was watching
While being watched

An audience was moving
Squirming, flying, buzzing
Breeding, hiding, feeding
Around this square and me
Swaying, rooted, growing
For animal and plant
Crowded and surrounding
My own activity

From gull to grammersow
Moss to mosquito
Squill to squat lobster
Ant to worm
The inhabitants and locals
Needed to be noted
As part of the whole
The ingredients of this world

   

About the Artist

 

Kurt Jackson is a contemporary artist and environmentalist based in the UK. He specialises in plein-air painting using a variety of media, often incorporating collage and the written word. Jackson has previously exhibited for the Museum  view a virtual display of his 2016 exhibition Bees (and the odd wasp) in my Bonnet.

 

Oxford University Museum of Natural History would like to thank the following people for their contributions to this exhibition:

 

Artist  Kurt Jackson

Director, Kurt Jackson Foundation – Caroline Jackson

Design – Creative Jay

Graphic Production – Creative Key

University of Oxford Researchers – Dr Tanesha Allen, Dr Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou, Dr Ruth Feber, Professor Yadvinder Malhi, Sara Lil Middleton, Professor E.J. Milner-Gulland, Dr Laura Moody, Dr Paris Stefanoudis, Professor Thomas Richards, Dr Sarah Watkinson, Dr Lisa Wedding, Professor Geraldine Wright, Rosalie Wright.

Build – OUMNH Workshop

Interpretation – OUMNH Public Engagement

Artwork Condition Checking – Lynn Shepherd, Peyton Beeli, Kostja Junglas, Carolyn Dudd, Jane Griffin

Specimens and Conservation – Robert Douglas