BIOGRAPHY
Chantal Powell (UK, 1977) is an artist-researcher with a PhD in psychology. Rooted in Jungian thought, alchemy and symbolic imagination, her work moves between making, curatorial and collection-based projects, writing and public speaking. Across these strands, her work engages archetypal imagery, myth and the symbolic life of objects and materials.
Her material practice spans ceramics, glass, textiles, metal casting and painting, and is grounded in a Jungian arts-based research approach. Powell has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The College of Psychic Studies, London; La Boulangerie, Paris; Yorkshire Artspace, Sheffield; and The Lightbox Museum, Woking. In October 2026, she will present a solo exhibition at MIRROR, the public gallery at Arts University Plymouth. Upcoming institutional group exhibitions include the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, and Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Exeter.
Alongside her studio practice, Powell gives specialist talks, illustrated lectures and public conversations on archetypal symbolism and psychological alchemy. Recent presentations include her research on Vegetal Alchemy at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo. Her curatorial projects include Night Shaking with the Ingram Collection and the recent site-responsive exhibition Fruits of My Woman. She is the founder of Hogchester Arts, a residency programme in West Dorset, and founder and host of The Red Book Club, an international online book club and speaker programme exploring Jungian psychology, contemporary art and symbolic thought.
PRACTICE
My work asks how symbolic imagination can function as a legitimate form of knowledge in contemporary culture.
Drawing on Jungian psychology, alchemy, mythology and historical source material, I am interested in symbolic thinking as a way of understanding the relationship between psyche, matter and the living world. While contemporary culture often privileges rational, measurable and instrumental forms of knowledge, my practice investigates what symbolic forms, images and materials can reveal about human experience.
I pursue this enquiry through making, curatorial projects, work with collections and public talks. Across these contexts, I return to recurring questions around archetypes, mythic imagination, material culture and the symbolic life of objects. Ancient Egyptian and Greek mythologies, alchemical manuscripts, depth psychology and historical collections form important reference points.
This research has led me to develop Vegetal Alchemy, a framework that foregrounds vegetal, bodily and regenerative dimensions within alchemical symbolism. It attends to growth, decay, incubation and regeneration as symbolic models for psychic and material change. It considers how forms of transformation rooted in the body and the living world can move beyond inherited patriarchal and mind-body divisions. In the studio, this research becomes material through processes such as firing, casting, stitching, melting and assembling.
Taken as a whole, my practice grows from sustained engagement with symbolic images, objects, stories and materials. It creates spaces in which symbolic thinking can take place, allowing meaning to arise through relation and encounter, with the natural world and the unconscious remaining active sources of knowledge.
CURRENT & UPCOMING
2026 (May/June) - Fruits of My Woman (curated by Chantal Powell), Lower Hewood Farm, Somerset
2026 (October) - Living Labyrinths: Art & Fungi (curated by Lara Goodband), Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery, Exeter
2026 (October) - SEEDBED (Solo), MIRROR public gallery, Plymouth
2026 (November) - Ecstasy and the Aftermath (curated by Huma Kabakci in collaboration with Vanessa Tothill), Sainsbury Centre Museum, Norwich