Thistledown

Artist Amy Sharrocks is best known for her large-scale collaborative installations exploring the theme of water. Her most acclaimed work to date is Museum of Water, an ongoing project through which members of the public donate water that has special significance for them.

In 2018-19 Sharrocks staged her solo show ‘Only Ever Almost There’ at Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum (LSAG&M). The site-specific exhibition set out to investigate the buildings and history of Leamington as a spa town, with other works on display exploring subjects such as the formation of clouds and the movement of air.

Thistledown is one of a series of large-scale ink drawings made specially for this show. The soft, feathery part of a thistle is depicted as an alien object, both beautiful and strange. Sharrocks has said of these drawings that ‘they are as much about death as about life’.

Thistledown now joins the collection at LSAG&M alongside Constellations of Water, a photographic work which the artist has donated.