'Kew is a museum of plants and also a living work of art’

Artist provocateur Marc Quinn has been shocking people for decades. His new exhibition, Light into Life, is inspired by the beauty of the gardens. Mark Hudson walks with him

- Mark Hudson

I’m walking through Kew Gardens with the artist Marc Quinn. His works are dotted among the dahlias and tulips as part of the largest exhibition devoted to a single artist in Kew’s 265-year history. “Nature is all the things that art should be,” Quinn tells me. “It’s exciting, transgressive, scary.”

A dive into the world of horticulture feels like a mellowing move, even a nod towards middle England, for an artist long seen as among the bad boys of British culture. Quinn was a leading light of the young British artists (YBA) generation whose tabloid-baiting statements, epic partying and flair for manipulating the art market stood the fusty British art scene on its head in the 1990s.

Kew may give us access to flora from some of the wildest places on Earth, but it’s presented within a meticulously ordered scientific frame in exquisitely manicured gardens. It’s all a world away from world-rocking YBA works such as Damien Hirst’s dead shark, Tracy Emin’s My Bed and indeed Quinn‘s own extraordinary Self, a cast of his head in 10 pints of his own frozen blood.

As we’re talking, several of his sculptures come into view near one of the majestic Victorian greenhouses. Or rather, they don’t quite come into view. The cut-out forms made from some highly polished material, seem to dematerialise as we approach, so it’s hard to tell what’s real sky and trees, and what’s reflection. As I move up to one of the plant-like shapes I could swear it disappears, so there’s just me, staring back at myself against a verdant backdrop of the Royal Botanic Gardens.