7 Artists Exploring Humanity’s Interaction With Nature At London Art Fair

Over 130 galleries are exhibiting at the 37^th edition of London Art Fair, which retains its original focus on modern art whilst increasing the representation of contemporary art and emerging artists and galleries. This year there is a more international feel than ever before, with 18 international galleries from the Czech Republic, Ireland, France, Iran, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and Turkey.

London Art Fair’s Museum partner for the 2024 edition is Sainsbury Centre, the first museum to treat art as a living entity, which is showcasing a curated selection of artefacts, sculpture and paintings. As the world’s first museum to recognize artworks as living entities, the Sainsbury Centre invites visitors to engage with art in a unique way. At London Art Fair is presenting its unique ‘Living Art’ experience, exhibiting a curated display of works from the permanent collection facing a display case which visitors can step inside and become an artwork. This innovative approach to the display and curation of art that makes the visitor the subject and the artwork the voyeur, illustrates the Sainsbury Centre’s novel new concept of presenting artworks as living objects, which reframes the way people perceive and interact with art. On display at London Art Fair are statement pieces from the Sainsbury collection by iconic modern and contemporary artists including Francis Bacon, Elisabeth Frink, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, and Yinka Shonibare.

The Encounters and Platform sections on the upper levels of the fair feature artists exploring the interconnectedness of human society and the natural world. Independent curator Becca Pelly-Fry has curated the Platform section this year where she has invited artists to respond to the theme Today for you, tomorrow for me, inspired by the practice of ‘ayni’ followed by the Q’ero people of Peru. Platform features eight galleries and curator Anna Souter respond to the theme of our relationship with the natural world and emphasise the need to ‘re-wild’ our imaginations and look to indigenous knowledge of ecosystems for wisdom.

Becca Pelly-Fry established a group of artists and healers called The Healing Collective, and her interest in artists exploring the interconnectivity of natural ecosystems, mycelial networks and interspecies communication is reflected in the curation of Platform.

Pelly-Fry told me when we met at the preview day: “London Art Fair were happy with the viewpoint I came up with—that sort of meeting point of spirituality, human relationships and the natural world. I’m really thinking about relationships—the relationships we have with one other, with the earth, with other beings and with the divine and sacred. I think I wanted quite a good spread—I didn’t want it to be just a painting show, I wanted a bit of dynamism. In trying to create a sacred space I was looking for different forms of that to create a different energy.”

I selected seven artists—Abigail Lane, Abigail Norris, Antonio Pichilla Quiacain, Erum Aamir, Poppy Lennox, Ram Dongre and Temsuyanger Longkumer—whose practice sits at the crossroads between humanity and nature. These artists are drawing inspiration from nature, using natural materials in their work, revisiting ancient mythologies or moving away from a human-centric world view towards a deeper respect of Mother Earth and her healing properties.

Temsuyanger Longkumer

Temsuyanger Longkumer is an interdisciplinary artist based in London. His new terracotta relief sculpture, Reflections II, features a tree mirrored below, evoking the imagery of water’s reflection or the earth’s shadow. This work at the London Art Fair for Oliver Projects marks a thoughtful departure from his earlier fully three-dimensional sculptures. The tree, a timeless symbol of life, wisdom, and interconnectedness, is rendered with a meditative symmetry, while the mirrored image beneath introduces duality—not as simple replication but as an invitation to introspection.

Temsuyanger Longkumer told me: “This shift from three-dimensional sculptural form to the compressed depth of relief can be seen not as a reduction but as a reimagining—a conscious exchange of tangible spatial volume for the intangible dimension of reflection. Rather than dictating meaning, this terracotta relief invites reflection and inquiry. The tree, with its roots firmly grounded and its reflection rippling below becomes a symbol of life’s layered realities—a reminder that every form carries its shadow and every existence its reflection.”

Abigail Lane

Abigail Lane is presenting an eye-catching installation and wall-mounted embroidered artwork with Suffolk gallery The Art Station. A beautifully hand-made display case holds a headless torso wearing a mustard-coloured jumper evoking the colour of rapeseed fields in the Suffolk countryside where Lane has lived since 2007. In a surreal intervention, a bird’s nest replaces the torso’s head, containing a solo egg which is reflected in a mirror above. Beneath the threadbare sweater is another case containing a picture of a bucolic waterfall, and beneath that a final cabinet containing green wellington boots with pink toes emerging.

On the wall is a finely embroidered outline of a hand with thread in tones of moss green dangling down. Lane studied fine art at Goldsmiths College and her work straddles many media including printmaking, sculpture, installation and embroidery. She “embraces transformative processes which create meaning”.

Antonio Pichilla Quiacain

Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín is known for his exploration of Mayan heritage and rituals which he creates mainly using textile fibres, extending his exploration into ancestral knowledge as a form of cultural resilience. Pichillá is represented by Elizabeth Xi Bauer who are exhibiting an eye-catching series of his bold, colourful, textile-based wall mounted works at London Art Fair.

Pichillá works in a studio at Lake Atitlán where his practice is driven by anthropological research into Guatemala’s urban and rural regions. Following his recent exhibition, The Offering, at MGLC Švicarija Art Museum in Ljubljana, Slovenia, works by Pichillá at London Art Fair further underscore his commitment to representing Maya identity through performative and abstract forms. He will launch a publication this year with writings by curators including Pablo José Ramírez, a curator at the Hammer Museum and former Adjunct Curator of First Nations and Indigenous Art at Tate Modern.

Poppy Lennox, 99 Projects

Poppy Lennox is one of the artists invited by curator Becca Pelly-Fry to take part in the Platform section of London Art Fair this year. Lennox is exhibiting with 99 Projects and presenting Energy Lines, a series of paintings, multi-media canvases and sculptures exploring spirituality and humankind’s connection to the earth and nature. Through Energy Lines Lennox invites viewers to contemplate how patterns, both within the cosmos and the natural world, serve as a way to understand the profound interconnectedness of existence. Using materials such as wood, plaster, wax, salt, concrete, metal powders and silk thread, Poppy’s dynamic works capture the delicate yet powerful networks that underpin life itself.

Ram Dongre

Ram Dongre is exhibiting stunning large-scale paintings inspired by Indian mythology and frescoes with Art Incept at London Art Fair in a group exhibition curated by international curator Virginia Damtsa as part of the Platform section. Dongre’s intriguing technique blends traditional elements of canvas and oil paints and references to Indian myths and legends with a lifelong interest in nature inspired by the tranquility of the rural landscapes where he has spent most of his life. Antique frescoes and murals in India at Bhimbetka, Ajanta, Altamira and Lascaux provide a historical record of past rituals, and these provide Dongre with inspiration for his contemporary reimaginings of ancient Indian art.

There is a sense of magical realism imbued within his paintings, which merge figures from mythological stories with motifs extracted from nature. Born in 1981 in Madhya Pradesh, Ram studied painting followed by a Masters from Indira Kala Sangit Vishwavidya, Chhattisgrah.

Virginia Damtsa told me at the fair: “Ram Dongre’s work explores the theme of lost heritage, drawing inspiration from India’s forgotten frescoes and murals. His art peels back layers of the past, connecting it to contemporary life, nature, animals, and flora.”

Erum Aamir

Erum Aamir was a physicist before becoming a ceramicist, and she has always been interested in blurring the line between art and science. At the heart of Aamir’s delicate porcelain sculptures lies a fascination with how nature constructs something atom by atom or cell by cell. She explores the patterns found in living organisms and is inspired by details invisible to the naked eye, which she accesses via a microscope. Aamir is showing a series of beautiful nature-inspired sculptures with Ruup & Form at London Art Fair.

Manchester museum Herbarium’s collection of microscopic slides has provided a valuable research source for Aamir’s art, and she has spent time looking at hundreds of specimens made by late seventeenth century botanists. Aamir’s sculptures fuse scientific reality with interpretations created by her imagination. Aamir has a scientific educational background and she graduated from the University of Punjab with a BSc in Mathematics and Physics and gained an MSc in Physics from the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad, Pakistan before going on to studying three-dimensional design in Manchester.

Erum Aamir says: “My practice exhibits the work made by hand without use of any technologies. I work directly with porcelain clay, with a very limited use of tools or equipment which helps me to create a mutual understanding between me and my chosen medium. The way I use porcelain is challenging as I keep it very thin which helps me to create a sense of fragility and movement in my work. I do not really design things before I start making them as I prefer to let the ideas happen during the slow making and thinking process. In my work, there’s always repetition of a single or multiple elements which mimic the process of growth. I like this repetitive action – it is not a thoughtless activity but is meditative and comforting. Moreover, the repetitive nature of bringing together many components creates a rhythm and facilitates an active trance of intention. “

Abigail Norris

Abigail Norris is exhibiting her Scrying series with Julian Page in the Platform section of London Art Fair. Norris spent time looking carefully at ancient trees in St-Remy-de-Provence, going into a trance like state in preparation for her Scrying series, which features sculpture and drawings that she feels were guided by the trees. Norris had a 20-year career in filmmaking before pivoting to sculpture with an MA course at the Royal College of Art.

Abigail Norris: “Nature has always been a place of comfort for me, a place to wrestle with the complexities of relations with ‘other’…Durer’s intense studies of nature led him to believe that through the close study of nature, one gets closer to the truth of being. And so I adopted a form of divination known as scrying during the process of mark making. Scrying is ‘seeing’ or ‘peeping’, and is a practice rooted in divination and storytelling.”

London Art Fair is at the Business Design Centre in London from 22nd-26th January 2025