Bea Bonafini draws upon mythology, spirituality and ecological thinking to create shapeshifting forms that move between human, animal and imagined worlds. Working across tapestry, cut carpet, cork painting, ceramics and installation, her practice reimagines ancient archetypes through richly tactile and materially experimental forms. Alluvial (2022) is a wall-hanging textile in hand-tufted bamboo silk. Its two symmetrical parts show flowing shapes the can be read as tumbling hair falling over pink flesh, or hot lava falling over volanic rock. The starting point for the series was idea of the labyrinth. Delving into Hermann Kern’s 1981 book on the subject during her 2020 residency at the British School at Rome, Bonafini researched this archetype, which goes back over 5000 years. She become fascinated by a line by Euripides, who describes the Minotaur as “a hybrid form, a monstrous fruit.” Bonafini likens the creature to “the way a fruit or a body rots and changes, where a succulent nutrient fruit becomes repulsive and toxic.”