Arts and culture at Eden
We're home to the Eden Sessions summer music concerts as well as a stunning collection of major artworks.
Art guide and map
Discover works from a diversity of grass-root and world-renowned national and international artists across the Eden Project’s 30-acre site in the Outdoor Gardens, Biomes, and Outer Estate.
These broad-ranging installations are inspired by social and environmental narratives such as climate change, biodiversity and the vital relationship between global communities and natural resources.
Art guide
1. Heather Jansch, Bronze and Driftwood Foals, 2013
Driftwood, bronze
These two foals, which appear similar at a first glance, are made from completely different materials. One is made from carefully chosen pieces of driftwood found on the beach, the other is a bronze cast.
2. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Pollinator Pathmaker, 2021
55-meter-long living artwork
To welcome more pollinator and human visitors to the Pollinator Pathmaker Eden Edition, the artwork is temporarily closed during autumn and winter for maintenance, but will reopen in spring 2024.
3. Chris Drury, Cloud Chamber, 2002
Granite, slate
This still, silent and meditative space is made within, and from, the surrounding landscape in the tradition of the land and environmental art movements originating in 1960s America. The beehive chamber, built by local dry-stone hedgers, was constructed from nearly 120 tonnes of Cornish granite and slate.
4. Jenny Beavan, Cores, 2016
Clay, glaze
Within Wild Cornwall, clay totems punctuate the landscape. From afar they resemble the bright trunks of silver birches. Created by local ceramic artist Jenny Beavan, they’re made from a mix of clays, turning from dark to light at their tips, and are impressed with seeds, unfurling ferns and flowers collected from Eden.
5. Peter and Sue Hill, Eve, 2005
Mixed media
Growing out of the landscape of Eden’s Myth and Folklore exhibit, this living sculpture is made of Eden clay, mirrors and planted with grasses.
6. El Anatsui, Aziza Gate, 2004
Greenheart wood
These sculptures started life as trees in West Africa. The tropical hardwood was repurposed from charred timbers after a section of the Victorian docks in Falmouth was destroyed by fire in 2003.
7. Don Francisco Montes Shuna and Yolanda Panduro Baneo, Spirits of the Rainforest, 2001
Acrylic paint
These murals were painted in-situ by the Peruvian maestro vegetalista (shamanic herbalist) Don Francisco Montes Shuna and artist Yolanda Panduro Baneo. To the Capanahua, indigenous people of the Peruvian rainforest, vegetalista are said to gain their knowledge and power to heal from the plants of the region. The murals portray different narratives and depictions of the plants that the artists' use, while also exploring the spiritual connection between plants and humanity.
8. Ai Weiwei, Fly, 2019
Cast Iron
Fly is from a series of monumental sculptures cast in iron from giant tree roots and trunks sourced in Brazil from the endangered Pequi Vinagreiro tree, typically found in the Bahian rainforest. Elements of these rare trees, some of which are over a thousand years old, were painstakingly moulded, conjoined and then cast to create striking compositions and bold forms that reflect their Brazilian heritage.
9. Tim Shaw, The Rites of Dionysus, 2000-2004
Copper
The sculptures depict the myth of Dionysus, Greek god of the vines, and his followers, the Maenads, who dance and writhe through the vines beating drums and sounding trumpets. The Dionysian myths are amongst the oldest stories linking mankind with nature. They serve as an insight into ancient civilisations, articulating truths of human nature that resonate with veracity to this day.
10. Studio Swine, ∞ Blue (Infinity Blue), 2018
Ceramic, robotics, water vapour
A huge ceramic ‘breathing’ sculpture pays homage to one of the world’s smallest but most important organisms: the cyanobacteria. Artist duo Studio Swine wanted to build a monument to these vital but invisible unsung heroes, in the same way as notable people are commemorated with statues.
11. Peter Randall-Page, Seed, 2007
Granite
Made from a single piece of Cornish granite, Seed is based on the geometric principles underlying plant growth, as is the structure of the Core building itself. This pattern relates to the Fibonacci sequence and the golden proportion and can be seen in pinecones and sunflower heads amongst many other botanical examples.
12. Jenny Kendler, Birds Watching, 2018-2019
Reflective film, aluminium, steel frame
Birds Watching is a 40-foot-long sculpture composed of a ‘flock’ of one hundred reflective birds’ eyes mounted on aluminium. The colourful eyes glow – or gaze – back when hit with light, such as a camera flash. Each eye belongs to a species of bird considered endangered by climate change, creating a potent portrait of what we stand to lose.
13. Ingela Ihrman, First Came the Landscape
Beech Wood
A giant stick skeleton made from the trunk, limbs and branches of a single beech tree that was blown down during Storm Eunice in 2022.
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