Alice Channer. Megaflora

For over fifteen years, Alice Channer, a leading contemporary British artist, has been making sculpture that represents nature in various states of transformation. Megaflora, 2021, is a sand-cast aluminium bramble stem that has been extracted via three-dimensional scan and stretched vertically into a three-meter-high freestanding sculptural form, and is presented here outside, in the Giardino di Ingresso of Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia, for the very first time.

By way of scale or material, Channer transmogrifies the form, nature or appearance of the flora and fauna that makes up our natural world, in a surprising, and oftentimes magical, manner. In this sense her work speaks directly to the Museum's rich, varied and fragile zoological, paleontological and botanical collections and its evocative layout for discovering the secrets of nature and living beings. At the same time, it is also a comment on the way in which our environment has transformed, or adapted to, the human activity that has led to today's climate crisis and the unprecedented threat capitalism is posing to nature.

For the first time, the sculpture is presented in an outdoor setting, powerfully showcasing the monumental evocative strength and the captivating ambiguity inherent in Channer's work. Her art consistently operates at the boundary between the real and the artificial, between nature and its reconstruction using industrial materials, technology, or precious metals. Alice Channer. Megaflora will examine the way in which the artist uses form so as to emphasise the violence of the current phenomenon of change, the protection it might be said to symbolise, and how we might rethink that which constitutes vulnerability today.

This installation will be accompanied by a brand new publication, with contributions from the Head of Natural History Museum Luca Mizzan, curator and editor Harry Woodlock, art historian and Assistant Professor at IUAV (Venice) Jacopo Galimberti and art writer and broadcaster Louisa Buck, including an image sequence of Buck having a specially commissioned tattoo, following the lines drawn by the artist over the stretched machined thorns and pleats of Megaflora, and inked by Eric the Viking, under the skin of her left arm, to mark her 64th birthday in 2024.
The publication will be presented on a dedicated day, scheduled at the Natural History Museum of Venice on Tuesday 24 June 2025.

With this project, the Natural History Museum confirms its commitment to promoting awareness of environmental issues, supporting the need for continuous reflection on the protection of nature and biodiversity, engaging in dialogue with an increasingly large and diverse audience. In this sense, contemporary art also contributes significantly to the debate by offering new perspectives, poetic solutions and critical stimuli.

Biography

Alice Channer was born in Oxford, UK, in 1977. She lives and works on the edges of London. She graduated from Goldsmiths College, London (2006), with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art, from the Royal College of Art, London (2008), with a Master's degree in Sculpture, and from the University of Sussex with a Bachelors degree in English Literature (1999). Channer has exhibited internationally in numerous institutional solo and group exhibitions including the Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany; Tate Britain, London, UK, and Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany. Most recently she presented Heavy Metals / Silk Cut, a major mid-career survey, at Kunstmuseum and Kunsthalle, Appenzell, Switzerland, accompanied by the artist's first comprehensive monographic catalogue. This solo installation marks the second time Channer has exhibited work in Venice under the auspices of Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, following the inclusion of four of the artist's works in Senza respiro. Arte contemporaneo a Londra, a group exhibition at Ca' Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art in 2019. In addition, she also participated in Massimiliano Gioni's 55th Venice Biennale exhibition Il Palazzo Enciclopedico in 2013.