Words by Wendela Rang

Can a vineyard make a painting? For Polish artist Alicja Biała, the idea is less far-fetched than it sounds.

Working across painting, sculpture, installation, and printmaking, Biała’s artistic practice places natural materials and their chemical properties at the centre. Her Open Bite series uses contaminated water from former mining sites to etch copper and zinc plates, while Hyperaccumulators explores plants capable of absorbing heavy metals from polluted soil. “I’ve always been more interested in working with materials than simply using them to make an image,” she explains. “I love when a material has a bit of a mind of its own, when it surprises you and you have to respond to what it’s doing.”

Her installation on regenerative plants, commissioned by the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, was just exhibited at Carvalho in New York. Now, Biała has turned her attention to the South Downs, collaborating with winemaker Dermot Sugrue and Wyn, a cross-disciplinary platform bringing together art and wine through limited-edition bottles.

Rather than painting the vineyard, Biała wanted to paint with it. Using lees – the sediment left behind during winemaking – she experimented with chemical reactions on copper. “I wanted to see if I could actually paint with the vineyard,” she explains.

The result? 100 individual copper plates arranged into a single composition that will become collectible wine labels – allowing fragments of the larger image to find new homes, and potentially even reunite. “We’re thinking of it almost like a puzzle, or a game for collectors,” Biała says.

For an artist whose work often confronts ecological destruction, the collaboration offered a lighter approach to questions around human intervention and natural processes. “I was simply enjoying being in it, working with it, and seeing what would happen,” she says. 

Nature had its own part to play. Unexpected rain and fluctuations in humidity and temperature influenced the chemical reactions, whilst the grass on which Biała left the plates to dry made marks on the copper. “It felt like the entire vineyard was joining in,” she recalls.

During Frieze Week, Wyn also transformed the studio of artists Rene Lazovy and Ed Sykes at Florence Trust on Britannia Row into a temporary English wine bar uniting contemporary art, winemaking and a storied creative space.

And whilst the wine will be drunk, the copper labels are designed to stay. A small piece of the vineyard – and a reminder of who you shared a bottle with.