Specially grown crop used to create art exhibition

Alice Fox has created an exhibition using a crop of blue-flowering flax

A plant normally used for making linen clothes has been specially grown and processed in Cornwall to make unusual artworks.

The sculptures are made from the dried stems and spun fibres of flax plants, and form part of a new exhibition at Kestle Barton on the Lizard.

The artist, Alice Fox, sowed the flax seeds in the flower meadows of the art gallery in spring 2024.

She said: "'Flax is something we're really familiar with in terms of linen in our clothing, but we don't necessarily know where it comes from.

Alice Fox works with a range of natural materials

"I work with plant fibres, so for me to know exactly where my materials have come from - taking it from seed, nurturing it, processing it, and then creating it into the final artwork – it's satisfying, immensely time consuming, and there's also a sustainability element to it."

Since sowing the seeds, Ms Fox returned each season to tend, harvest, dry and spin the flax before building the artworks for the exhibition.

She also created works out of dried blackthorn, made inks from the plants in the gallery's garden, and used mud from the nearby Frenchman's creek on the Helford river.

Dr Ryya Bread, curatorial director of the site, said Ms Fox is "naturally attuned to the ethos and aims of Kestle Barton".

"She has a keen interest in the natural world. She possesses important knowledge of traditional skills in both textiles and growing.. her finished pieces are steeped in a sense of the familiar, and yet offer up something utterly new – a hybrid of nature and human design," she said.

The exhibition is free to enter and runs from Saturday until the end of August 2025.