Apothecary
Stephen Bambury
Joyce Campbell
Murray Green
Noel Ivanoff
Julia Morison
Fiona Pardington
Cornelia Parker

4 - 24 February 2011

The  Apothecary,  probably first appeared in the 15thCentury,  as  the keeper of the medicines, and  the brewer and dispenser of healing herbs.   He was both healer and magician.   The role evolved  from the alchemist who,  desirous to achieve metaphysical transformations, had acquired a knowledge of organic  salts, gun powders,  paints, potions and  poisons and the all important skills  of  the chemical processes  that might have turned  base metal to gold. 

This combination of knowledge, superstition  and  magic somehow propelled us into the  age of modern medicine but left  behind a rich inheritance for the artist;  full of symbolism,  instructive in process, a source of materials, and a potent pot of allegory and mysticism. 

The artists, delving into the apothecary’s chest have found  poisons, gun powder, pigments and the techniques of metallurgy  to create works that capture the elusive, ephemeral, and the mysterious qualities of this legacy.