Object Factory

Group exhibition of contemporary ceramics. Two works exhibited: Willow pattern, wall installation of fifteen china plates with digital prints of micro plant material. Produce in collaboration with Spode. Bouquet, a collection of vases produced in collaboration with Royal Crown Derby and featuring prints of micro images of pollen and seeds.

Rob Kesseler

Research Interests

Representation of nature within contemporary culture. Arts and craft movement, modernism, post modernism. Ceramic Art & Design. Electron microscopy, ceramics, NESTA, Kew Gardens, Pollen, Seeds

Current Research

My practice inhabits a territory where Design, Fine Art and Applied Art overlap and explores the interrelationship between the Arts and Sciences, in particular the natural world, for which I was recently awarded a three year fellowship from NESTA to work with microscopic plant material in the herbarium at Kew. This has resulted in a diverse range of projects: installations, public art and landscaping commissions, works in ceramic, glass and textiles, and digital photography. I recently published two major books in collaboration with botanical scientists at Kew, Pollen The Hidden Sexuality of Flowers and Seeds, Time Capsules of Life, which in which original micrographs were digitally remastered in colour to reveal mesmeric structures that lie somewhere between science and symbolism.

Current projects include Hortus in Vitro,an architectural glass commission for the Botanic Garden in Oxford University, a design collaboration with Royal Crown Derby China and a third book in collaboration with Kew on Fruit. In 2006 I was elected as a Fellow of the Linnaean Society for my work in the field of visualising plant science. Additionally I am a board member of the Atoms to Art research network in Ceramic & Glass, and also a member of AIR the Artists Advisory Group for a-n magazine.