Abby Conway – From Hedge and Hollow

5 Nov – 13 Dec | Showcase

As a child, the young Abby would escape to the long grass at the end of her family’s wild, unkempt garden, imagining tiny worlds. What it would be like to be beetle-sized, looking up at the towering stems and gigantic leaves?

For her exhibition/installation From Hedge and Hollow, the beautiful brass pieces offer echoes of that scale-shift, that moment of wonder when the familiar becomes fantastical.

Abby Conway initially trained as an illustrator, spending years creating images hidden inside books for others to discover. She taught and nurtured creativity in families and children, but somewhere along the way stepped back from her own creative practice. Life required it. But watching her own children build their tiny wild worlds in her garden and the wider countryside, shifted something. Abby realised she had come full circle, from that child in the long grass to a mother allowing magic back in.

Last year Abby was commissioned to create a 12-metre mural for her village shop; creating steel and wood silhouettes which have become part of the community’s landscape. People requested pieces of that magic for their own gardens, and suddenly Abby wasn’t just an illustrator anymore — she was making work that lived in the world, wild and three-dimensional.

The pieces in From Hedge and Hollow are the latest evolution of this body of work. Cut from warm brass sheet, they carry the lino-printing aesthetic into metal. Mistletoe, oak, holly, and hawthorn — all plants of protection and folklore, once hung above doorways or woven into tradition to keep homes safe. Here, magnified and modular, they become both installation and invitation.