THE NINTH WAVEThe artists Venetia Nevill on celebrating Virginia Woolf and the magical qualities of algae...Wavelengths, a free group art exhibition coinciding with the 20th Coastal Currents event in Hastings, offers a fresh artistic interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s body of work, celebrating all nine of her published novels.An all-female group of nine contemporary artists – Jane Cordery, Kit Forrest, Sonia Griffin, Rachel Hornsby, Sam King, Frederique Jones, Lorrain Mailer, Carolyn Morris and Venetia Nevill – have all produced work responding to a specific book.Nevill says she was inspired by one particular passage in Woolf’s novel Between the Acts (‘weeps the birch of silver bark with long dishevelled hair’). The birch tree, she explains, has always been associated with the spirits of the dead, symbolising renewal and also the feminine (it is also known as the ‘goddess tree’, she notes).Nevill’s ecologically informed installations often pay homage to our elemental connections with nature, as well as the notion of transformation and healing through the recycling process – themes that chime well with Woolf’s. ‘I am particularly drawn to Woolf’s love of nature and deep connection with what she called “moments of being”; flashes of awareness when an individual is fully conscious of her experience, which reveal a connection to a larger pattern behind the “cotton wool” of daily life,” says Nevill. ‘She saw this new form of reality as inherent in nature, observing, “I see something before me, something abstract, but residing in the downs or sky, besides which nothing matters, in which I shall rest and continue to exist – reality I call it”.Nevill reflects that ‘the natural world has become my canvas as well as my inspiration’ – her art incorporates aspects of meditative ritual, healing and alchemy, referencing the Celtic wheel of life that celebrates the equinoxes and the lunar cycles. Her materials have included the earth, red iron, bark from dying trees and water from sacred wells.In looking towards nature in this way, there is a strong sense of rebalance in Nevill’s work. ‘In our busy, media-orientated lives it is easy to lose touch with ourselves,’ she says.In a recent work – the interactive installation Regenesis for the Waterloo Festival in London –Nevill turned her attention to a material that is under-exploited in the art world: algae. ‘It is a magical micro-organism believed to be the source of all life,’ says Nevill. ‘Through the chemical reaction of photosynthesis it creates oxygen – so all animate life could exist. It is often seen as a hazard, but its potential as a renewable energy and sustainable food source is exciting. Water carries memory…’ wavelengths-woolf.weebly.com; venetianevill.com