“Ghosts of the Great North Wood”: Natasha V. Moody Wins RENSEP Artist’s Award for Exploring Esoteric Ecology
In June 2023 the RENSEP Artist Award was announced in partnership with Arts University Plymouth. As part of the greater funding scheme the Artist Award aims to foster new research at the intersection of artistic and esoteric practice. The award garnered significant interest, resulting in numerous applications. The selection process concluded last Wednesday with the interviews of the five finalists. We are delighted to announce Natasha V. Moody as the winner of the award for her project titled “Ghosts of the Great North Wood: Alchemising Ecological Grief.” Natasha’s project will delve into the intersection of art, ecology and the esoteric and examine the role of esoteric practice in the face of anthropocentric poly-crisis. The project will use alchemy as a lens to consider our human relationship to the natural world, explore the archetypal forest as alchemical space and the practice of conjuring ghosts of lost landscapes.
Natasha V. Moody is a British/Polish artist with an MA in Fine Art and History of Art from The University of Edinburgh and an MA in Art and Ecology at Goldsmiths. She specialises in intermedia art practice and fin-de-siècle occulture. Her work integrates the occult and ecology in artistic practice across sculpture, installation, photography, and writing. Natasha’s artistic practice invites viewers into a realm where plant material becomes a conduit for occult encounters and ecological reflections. She conceptualizes her artistic practice as an alchemical journey, where process/material-led inquiries transmute pine sap to petrified sunlight and the photographic darkroom to a séance cabinet.
