Alexis Parinas
There are so many seeds, so many stars (2024)
​10 September 2024 - 7 September 2025

There are so many seeds, so many stars is a new commission by Alexis Parinas, an artist working across moving image, printing, painting and installation. It was developed in collaboration with 230, Year 7 students from St Peter’s School, Huntington. Combining the students’ interest in film and storytelling, Parinas worked with them in 18 workshops, across an academic year.  They were invited to create new worlds together through storytelling before translating them into vivid, kaleidoscopic moving images by applying felt tips directly onto 35mm film.

In short, eight-frame films, the students depicted flowers blooming, plants growing and stars shooting across the night sky. Inspired by these animations and their themes of growth and renewal, Alexis created There are so many seeds, so many stars. Originally painted onto 35mm film, before being scaled to span the facade of Wysing’s New Block, the work begins with a vibrant sunrise. Flowers blossom in the golden fields of summertime and bare, winter branches are silhouetted against a quiet dusk before sunset falls and the cycle begins again. Zooming in and out of grassy landscapes, as well as skipping across the seasons, the work takes us through daily and yearly cycles. By reflecting on these natural rhythms,There are so many seeds, so many stars invites us to celebrate the beauty of everyday transitions, and our relationship to them, as they unfold around us and across the landscape.

Alexis Parinas lives and works in London. Alexis has presented work or led workshops at numerous arts organisations, schools, universities, and youth groups across the UK and internationally. Previous projects include Markets, Memories and Mangoes, Creative People and Places Hounslow, London; Film Diary NYC III, San Mei Gallery, London and Millennium Film Workshop, New York (all 2024); Analogue Short Film Screening, not/nowhere, London (2023) and Concrete Salon, Barbican Centre, London (2019). They are part of Syllabus VII, a collaboratively produced alternative learning programme developed by Wysing Arts Centre in partnership with Eastside Projects, Birmingham, New Art Exchange, Nottingham, PS2, Belfast, Spike Island, Bristol, TACO, Thamesmead, and Studio Voltaire, London.

The New Block Commission is an annual commission that engages directly with Wysing’s site and surrounding landscape. Marking a move away from indoor, exhibition-based projects, the opportunity invites artists to intervene in and re-make the facade of Wysing’s most prominent building.

Supported by Arts Council England and Art Fund with the John Armitage Charitable Trust.

Alexis Parinas, Process Image (2024). Image courtesy of the artist.

Pheo Cox, Conversation With Earth: A Daydreamer’s Map, 2024

Whilst on a young people’s placement at Wysing, artist Pheo Cox created ‘Conversation with Earth: A Daydreamer’s Map’. Pheo’s commission takes us on a journey through Wysing’s site, exploring the biodiverse landscape and the curiosities it’s home to.

The detailed, risograph printed map follows a personal journey reflecting on what nature can provide. It responds to sensory, factual and mythological ways of learning about plants, reminding us of the importance of our connection with nature. 

Through this map, Pheo calls upon us to get to know the earth a little better, to reconsider our relationship with it and to ponder what could happen if we made space to realise, notice, and listen. 

Each map includes a set of 4 postcards and a packet of wildflower seeds, inviting us to share in the joy of nature. 

By purchasing Cox’s edition, you’ll be supporting our Creative Youth Council. The Creative Youth Council is a calm and friendly safe space where young people aged 14-18 from all over Cambridgeshire can unleash their creativity and share it with people their own age. 

Click here to purchase.

Rafał Zajko | The New Block Commission

Corns and Calluses, 2024

Corns and Calluses is a new commission from artist Rafał Zajko that explores labour, land, and play. The bright blue hand is sprouting wheat: it is part-human and part-plant; the artist is imagining a future in which humans might exist in innovative, unexpected forms. Zajko is often influenced by Science-Fiction, and this work marries his interest in the future of our planet, with landscape, farming, and industry. Corns and Calluses prompts us to consider the possibilities of our planet’s evolution and our relationship to it.

The title refers to hard, painful areas of skin that can be caused by repetitive pressure. Zajko draws a parallel between the pressure on farmworkers’ bodies as they work, and the pressure on the land as it is cultivated by industrial farming that can be harmful to our planet.  

This work was produced alongside a new commission by Zajko at St Peter’s School, Huntingdon, which saw the artist collaborate with 270 Year 7 Students to create a work based around their desires for the future. A new series of sculptures now unfold throughout the school, with a major new artwork situated at the entrance.

Rafał Zajko is a polish artist based in London, UK. His work deals with issues around the industrial past exploring its environmental impact in relation to working class heritage and queer identities.

His sculptural practice incorporates many different materials and processes, including ceramics, ventilation systems, prosthetics, and performance to examine folklore, science fiction and queer technoscience. His work places an emphasis on industrial materials and the body’s relationship to technology, drawing from his own family history of working in fields and factories in Poland.

The New Block Commission is a new set of commissioning from Wysing Arts Centre. Supported by Arts Council England, Art Fund and the Henry Moore Foundation, The New Block Commission moves away from indoor, exhibition-based projects to a site-based approach that makes our work more visible.