Friday, 2 August 2024

Marc Quinn at Kew Gardens

 Caught the train to London and then hopped on the Bromptons for the journey towards Kew. We stopped off at Hammersmith to catch a bit of Olympic coverage on a big screen.

This was a close up of a Chinese table tennis player.

Once at Kew we picked up a map and went to the superb Princess of Wales conservatory.

My absolute favourite area is the giant water lillies and an urban myth is that a small child can sit on a lily pad and it doesn't sink. We didn't see this theory being tested, but one of the gardeners was in the pond in waders doing maintenance and they piled their tools up on a pad and non of them got wet.

One of the lily ponds had a glass viewing window and there was gigantic fish swimming around underneath them. They looked at least four feet long, but it is possible that the glass was acting as a magnifier, or I could be exaggerating.

Back outside we passed a beautiful sculpture amongst the ferns, but it wasn't by Marc Quinn so we had to keep walking on.

Who is Marc Quinn you may be asking?

 Well he is a London based artist who - according to the brochure - is not easily categorised. This sort of build up is always a worry to me.


He has 17 sculptures all around the gardens, and they are all inspired by Kew's landscape and collections.
This one is outside the palm house and is a giant shiny palm leaf, and a giant red orchid was down by the pagoda.


He also sculpted four bonsai trees and 'imagined that they had been set free from the pruning and containment and were set free to reach their full height'.


So he sculpted two enormous bonsai plants, or maybe we should just call them trees, in nice bonsai style pots. 


Finally, five mirrored sculptures set in the gardens. These were the most fun and if you stood in the right place then you could get a nice selfie.


So overall, Marc added some extra interest to the trip, but really couldn't compare to the fantastic nature on display.