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Lot Essay
The idea of the botanic garden, a world in a chamber where nature and culture meet, has long attracted Alison Turnbull. A Garden of Numbers brings together a black and white photograph of a tiered fountain in Rome’s Orto Botanico with a digital print of Pascal’s triangle of numbers. Embedded in this digital image, crisscrossed with coloured lines and hand-tinted with watercolour, is the Fibonacci number sequence. This mathematical sequence is famously present everywhere in nature, in the seed head of a sunflower, the pods of a pinecone and the population of a beehive. The juxtaposition of the two images in A Garden of Numbers, which is at once formal and intuitive, invokes human attempts to comprehend and contain nature’s profusion.
Alison Turnbull (born Bogotá, Columbia, 1956) studied in Madrid at Academia Arjona (1975–1977); in Surrey at The West Surrey College of Art and Design (1977–1978) and in Corsham at The Bath Academy of Art (1978–1981).
Her work is in major collections including the Arthur Andersen, London; Arts Council England; The British Council; Clifford Chance, London; Deutsche Bank AG, London; Government Art Collection, London; Imperial War Museum, London; Imperial College Health Care Trust, London; Southampton City Art Gallery; and Seagrams, London.
Alison Turnbull (born Bogotá, Columbia, 1956) studied in Madrid at Academia Arjona (1975–1977); in Surrey at The West Surrey College of Art and Design (1977–1978) and in Corsham at The Bath Academy of Art (1978–1981).
Her work is in major collections including the Arthur Andersen, London; Arts Council England; The British Council; Clifford Chance, London; Deutsche Bank AG, London; Government Art Collection, London; Imperial War Museum, London; Imperial College Health Care Trust, London; Southampton City Art Gallery; and Seagrams, London.