The Code of the Subtle, and a season of remembrance

Last month I wrote to you about a pause for reflection, and about the news that my practice had been selected as a founding member of The Spiritual in Art International Collective, curated by Nellimya Arthouse in Switzerland. That invitation has since unfolded into something concrete, and I wanted you to know where it is leading — and where you might encounter the work.

The Code of the Subtle, the Collective's inaugural exhibition, opens on 13 September and runs until 30 October. Rather than gathering everything in one place, each artist presents work in their own country, connected through Nellimya Arthouse in Aranno — a dispersed constellation rather than a single room. My three Peony Studies — archival pigment prints tracing a meditation on bereavement — are my contribution.

 They will be showing at Fox Yard Studio, Stowmarket, Suffolk, 13–15 September. I will be there on the Sunday afternoon, and I would genuinely love to see you and talk about the works in person. If Switzerland is more reachable than Suffolk, the vernissage itself takes place at Nellimya Arthouse in Aranno on 13 September. More detail can be found via the links below my signature.

 Remembrance, it turns out, runs through this whole season of my work. Last week the Southern Nature Art Exhibition closed. In this, I showed two dramatic botanical studies of single magnolia blossoms — Apuldram Magnolia and Sidlesham Magnolia — made after visiting two Sussex churches in the spring and summer after lockdown. Those blossoms, and the quiet parish churchyards that held them, became my way of marking a period we all came through differently: a kind of private remembering, painted in lieu of words. The peonies did the same work for a more personal loss. Different flowers, different griefs, one method — staying with a bloom until it discloses what it is carrying.

I have made a short film telling the origin story of the Peony Studies — how a jar of peonies in a holiday home became, over four months, an unplanned map of mourning. You can watch it here .

As ever, thank you for staying connected to this practice through its quieter seasons. Seeing work you have followed from its fragile beginnings arrive in two exhibitions within a month is, honestly, a little dizzying — and the people who remembered the daylight around early efforts deserve to share the glow.

With warmth and gratitude,

 Catrin