From ancient stone walls to weathered urban surfaces, Miranda Donovan finds beauty in the marks left by time, nature and humanity. Between Order and Chaos: The Art of Miranda Donovan, opening at London Art Exchange (LAX), New Cavendish Street, explores the tension between permanence and decay, structure and disorder.
Represented by LAX, Donovan combines richly textured surfaces, architectural materials and expressive colour to create distinctive contemporary works. Using oil, acrylic and mixed media on canvas and board, she also incorporates unconventional materials, including reclaimed stable doors and the aged leather covers of a 1910, 11th edition of an Encyclopaedia Britannica that once belonged to her grandfather. Featuring key works Portal and Aquatic Dreams (above), the exhibition reveals her fascination with the stories held within surfaces and the beauty that emerges when opposing forces meet.
A world between cultures
Raised between London, the Netherlands and Gozo, Donovan draws on contrasting cultures and landscapes. Now living on the Wiltshire–Somerset border, she brings together the energy of urban life, the elemental character of the Mediterranean and the quieter rhythms of the British countryside.
“I learnt to carry strands of different societies, different cultures, within me,” she reflects.
Walls are central to her artistic practice, representing both physical structures and repositories of human history. From ancient cave paintings to weathered stonework and overlooked city walls, she sees their surfaces as records of human experience.
“Walls create havens as well as barriers, whilst their surfaces tell stories through their colours and the marks left both by man and the elements,” she says.
For Donovan, these marks speak of resilience and transformation, revealing beauty in imperfection.
The art of layering
A wall is the starting point for almost every Donovan painting. Using materials associated with the building trade, she first applies a cement-like substance mixed with polymers, before layering paint, text, figures and slogans. She repeatedly sands back and reapplies the surface until fragments of earlier stages emerge, creating works that exist between painting, architecture and sculpture.
“I’m fascinated by the whole idea of how the marks that both man and the elements leave within these contexts, and about bringing in things that we deem as opposites,” she explains.
Gozo remains a powerful influence. Its arid climate and weathered dry-stone walls shaped her sensitivity to the relationship between fragility and strength.
“Despite the degradation to these walls there was a solidity about them, a strength about them, broken up by the disarray by nature and the marks left by man.”
This paradox lies at the heart of her work: the idea that something can be weathered yet enduring, fragmented yet whole. Through layers of colour and texture, Donovan explores how order and chaos can coexist, revealing an underlying harmony within apparent disorder.
An established artistic practice
Born into a creative family, Donovan studied History of Art at the University of Bristol before pursuing Fine Art at the École supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence and City & Guilds of London Art School, graduating in 2005. Her influences range from Dutch Golden Age landscape painting to Anselm Kiefer, informing her interest in the sculptural possibilities of painting.
In 2007, she was taken on by Steve Lazarides and held her first solo exhibition in Greek Street, Soho, which sold out. Subsequent projects have included collaborations with Mark Hix, an exhibition with Stephen Webster in Beverly Hills in 2016, and a show with Nick Woolff at The Woolff Gallery. Her work is in the permanent collection of House of Koko, Soho House, Copelouzos Family Museum in Athens and The Groucho.
With Between Order and Chaos, Donovan brings together her lifelong fascination with architecture, cultural identity and the traces people leave behind. Her work invites viewers to reconsider the everyday surfaces around them and discover the histories they contain. In her hands, the wall becomes a metaphor for memory, identity and resilience- a place where opposing forces meet and history endures.
The exhibition runs from 12 November to 15 January at London Art Exchange, New Cavendish Street, London.
EXHIBITION DETAILS
Exhibition: Between Order and Chaos: The Art of Miranda Donovan
Venue: London Art Exchange (LAX), 156 New Cavendish Street, London, W1W 6YW
Dates: 12 November – 15 January
