PHILIPPA van LOON
Photopolymer etching on Somerset Satin Enhanced 330gsm
37·5 × 28·5 cm 
Edition #10 of 25
 
Philippa van Loon was at Chelsea College of Art with Gavin Turk so the Turkish Tulips exhibition evolved out of a reunion with her British artist friend and their peer group. The resulting education programme inspired by the exhibition reviews and explore the very contemporary experiences of Great Britain and Europe as well as the Middle East in the light of their shared history in trade, aesthetics and science.
As a direct descendant of a historic Dutch trading family, Philippa van Loon has been the Chair of the Board of Museum Van Loon in Amsterdam since 1996. Her work echoes the emotional sensitivities of female actionists with the patterns and mark-making aesthetic of her contemporaries. 
Her glass Tulip Coffin was made in the 1990s as a response to the fragile relationship between life and death, using the reference of an emblematic symbol of her motherland. It appears in the Portfolio as a miniature etching — as if from a traditional book of fairy tales — of a magical crystal coffin filled with pressed tulip petals.