The curious made extraordinary

All Visual Arts presents The Age of the Marvellous

Inspired by the Wunderkammer, or Cabinet of Curiosities, popular in the late Renaissance through the Baroque period (ca. 1550–ca. 1700). An era characterized by a revival of learning, the sum of all of man’s knowledge could be represented in rooms filled with natural wonders, artificial exotica and relics or art works concerned with the supernatural.

The Wunderkammer‘s particular ability to evoke the marvellous, to incite the emotions of awe, wonder, surprise and astonishment leading to curiosity and then learning was based on its ability to draw parallels and unify seemingly unrelated fields of human knowledge like Science and Art. The brilliant evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson considered the unification of knowledge – or what he labeled ‘Consilience’ in his eponymous book published in 1998 - nothing short of imperative for the survival of the human species.



Adam Fuss’s photograms
Alastair Mackie's Metamorphoses




Polly Morgan's At the Beginning, inspired by a Victorian proposal for a flying machine.




Kate MccGwire's sculptural works made from crow and jackdaw feathers.



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