Have I mellowed and joined the establishment?No

As his new show opens at Kew Gardens, the original YBA Marc Quinn tells Robbie Griffiths why he is now inspired by nature

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MARC QUINN, once perhaps the most shocking Young British Artist, is adamant he hasn’t mellowed with age. Quinn, who helped kick off the roaring Nineties with a disturbing bust of his head made with 10 pints of his own blood, is this weekend opening a new show at that hallowed idyll of English pleasantry, Kew Gardens. But when I ask if the collaboration shows he has joined the establishment, he quickly says no.

For evidence Quinn, 60, points to a bunch of flowers cast in animal blood he’s taking along to Kew, and says the natural world is not gentle, but red in tooth and claw. “I think that nature is beautiful and disturbing,” he argues. “If you just let go of a city, it gets engulfed in plants and falls apart. Nature is a kind of relentless machine that consumes… there’s something kind of dangerous about nature as well as beautiful.” Quinn doesn't make any concessions to age with the way he dresses either. He's sporting a tracksuit and trademark orange New York Knicks cap as he greets me in the basement of his expansive Clerkenwell studio. Upstairs, staff are helping complete his visions.

With a show imminent, the studio is emptier than usual but it still has striking work. Behind him sits a likeness of Kate Moss in a leotard, contorted into an impossible-looking yoga pose, while on the desk between us is a miniature of his statue of activist Jen Reid, which Quinn made to replace the Edward Colston statue torn down in 2020 by anti-racism protesters in Bristol who objected to the celebration of a man who profited from the slave trade.