CHANTAL POWELL

Chantal Powell is a British artist whose practice is informed by Jungian psychology, alchemical symbolism, and her personal exploration of the unconscious. With a PhD in psychology, she follows a Jungian arts-based research approach, using artistic process to engage with archetypal material.

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Working across ceramics, glass, textiles, metal casting, and painting, Powell engages alchemy as a living symbolic system. Her research draws on mythic and archetypal lineages such as Ancient Egypt, through which themes of fragmentation, bodily gesture, and processes of incubation recur. ​

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Central to this practice is what she terms vegetal alchemy. Here, the vegetative names a mode of life, referring to foundational processes such as reproduction and decay shared across animal, human and plant life. Vegetal alchemy situates ecological kinship and the sacred intelligence of matter as central concerns. In Powell’s work, this is materially expressed through hybrid configurations of vegetal roots, scientific vessels, and anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures. Alchemy is reimagined beyond the mind–body split that structures modern thought.

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​Powell has exhibited in the UK and internationally, including The College of Psychic Studies, London; La Boulangerie, Paris; and The Lightbox Museum, Woking. She recently presented her research at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, and has upcoming institutional group exhibitions at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich,; Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter and a forthcoming solo exhibition at MIRROR public gallery in October.

She is the founder of the Hogchester Arts residency programme, host of The Red Book Club, and delivers talks on archetypal symbolism and psychological alchemy. She has co-curated exhibitions focusing on archetypally symbolic art, including Night Shaking with the Ingram Collection in Woking and Conjure in Bruton.