LETCHWORTH GARDEN CITY ( =).- Broadway Gallery in Letchworth Garden City announces an exhibition of British artist Rebecca Louise Law opening 25 August 2016. ‘Still Life: Sculpture & Prints by Rebecca Louise Law’ will include new works by Law created for the exhibition, including a site-specific installation that will be shown alongside a selection of sculptures and photographic prints.

Law is known for her unusual approach to materials using mainly natural elements to construct her compositions. The daughter of a National Trust gardener, Law grew up surrounded by flowers and created her first natural installation in 2003 using thousands of fresh dahlias from her father’s nursery garden. Law uses live flowers in her installations to allow the work to evolve naturally over the course of each exhibition. In contrast, her sculptures are often encased in Victorian-style vitrines and cloches that appear to preserve the contents – flowers, foliage and sometimes insects – in a moment of time.

The exhibition at Broadway Gallery will explore the impact of Dutch flower painting on Law’s practice and will feature a series of photographic prints in which Law pays direct homage to the still life painters of the Dutch Golden Age by recreating famous works by painters such as Jan Davidsz. de Heem and Ambrosius Bosschaert. The series, photographed by Tom Hartford, includes Law’s regeneration of de Heem’s Festoon of Fruit and Flowers (c. 1635 – 1684) in the work Jan Davidsz, Heem (2014) with the notable addition of tiny human figurines, which serve to remind the viewer of the complicated relationship between man and nature.

Broadway Gallery has also commissioned a large-scale sculptural installation by Law that responds to both the architectural context of the Gallery as well as that of the wider Garden City. Law is widely recognised for her colossal artworks and has created site-specific installations around the world including The Yellow Flower (2014) in Nagasaki, The Grecian Garden (2015) in Athens, Flowers 2015: Outside In (2015) in New York, Garten (2016) in Berlin and The City Garden (2016), which is currently on display in London. Law’s largest installation to date, The Canopy (2016), is made up of over 150,000 flowers on permanent display in Melbourne.

Law’s work has been exhibited alongside Damien Hirst and Beth Carter, at institutions including the Royal Academy of Arts and the Victoria & Albert Museum. This is the first time Law’s work will be shown in Letchworth Garden City and is the third exhibition to be held at Broadway Gallery, which opened in February 2016 with an exhibition of British Pop artist Richard Smith. Broadway Gallery is uniquely funded through Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation, which administers the Garden City Estate and reinvests revenue from commercial rents into the cultural and social wellbeing of the town.

Rebecca Louise Law said: ‘We tend to overlook the wonders of nature that occur around us every day. I want to capture and preserve these moments of natural beauty in my work to celebrate and share them with the world. My work is often associated with death and decay, but I see it as a preservation of life.’

Laura Dennis, Visual Arts Curator of Broadway Gallery, said: ‘It is fitting that Law’s solo exhibition should take place in Letchworth Garden City, a community that, for over a century, has integrated elements of the natural world into the design of the town. The exhibition serves to highlight and celebrate this identity, while showcasing the continued inspiration that can be found in the beauty of flowers.’

Rebecca Louise Law is an installation artist based in east London, best known for artworks created with natural materials, namely flora. The physicality and sensuality of her site-specific work plays with the relationship between humanity and nature. Law’s sculptures seek to highlight the beauty of natural change. Recent exhibitions include Chandran Gallery, San Francisco (solo exhibition, 2016), The City Centre, London (2016), Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2015), The Royal Academy of Arts, London (2014), Onaissis Cultural Centre, Athens (2014) and the William Morris Gallery, London (2013).