6th June – 30th September 2025

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Bloom, a sprawling, glow-in-the-dark installation of 5,000 vividly colored 3D printed flowers at Jersey Zoo, transformed the grounds of Les Augrès Manor into a surreal meadow. The artwork commemorates the visionary approach of British naturalist Gerald Durrell to zoo-led conservation while embodying Semple’s activist-driven practice rooted in accessibility and ecological responsibility.

Measuring seven by seven meters, the floral field is filled with six of Durrell’s favorite flowers—chrysanthemums, freesias, roses, scarlet pimpernel, crocuses, and pink magnolias—each sculpted from sustainable bioresin.  The flowers are hand-painted in radiant hues and coated with Semple’s proprietary ‘Lit’ pigment, allowing them to absorb sunlight and emit a gentle glow after dark. 

” Ever since I visited Jersey Zoo as an 8-year-old child, it’s had a place in my heart. This project means the world to me, because now more than ever, Gerry’s philosophy and his conservation ethics are vital to the planet.”

Positioned in the heart of Jersey Zoo, the installation was commissioned by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust as part of GD100, the year-long celebration of what would have been naturalist Gerald Durrell’s 100th birthday, holding special significance for the community. ‘The flowers in Bloom are some of Gerry’s favorites, and I know he would’ve loved to see the colorful meadow pop up in the courtyard of his cherished Les Augrès Manor,’ says Lee Durrell, Honorary Director of the trust. 

Each bloom in the installation is both a tribute and a call to action. By offering the flower sculptures for public purchase, Durrell and Semple invite individuals to literally take a piece of conservation home. Proceeds directly support the trust’s global mission to save species from extinction, with each flower symbolizing a node in the larger network of supporters, scientists, and dreamers who share in Durrell’s original vision of a wilder, healthier world.

Curated By Lee Cavaliere

9 August – 7 September 2019

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This exhibition navigates the winding and at times perilous road the artist’ work, and life, have taken over the last 20 years. One could say that the artist’s career began when his life ended, as he flatlined from a mysterious allergic reaction as a teenager. The months spent in hospital, the resultant fear, anxiety and feeling of being on a mortal knife edge; these each drove Semple to embark on a prolific image-making career beginning with proliferation on eBay, and spanning painting, sculpture, print, film, audio, the written word and social activism.

You can see elements of this journey through the exhibition; the terror and power of the medical environment; the boundless curiosity and humour that drives his practice; the dark places visited enroute and the generosity of an artist whose work challenges walls, encourages dialogue and continues to laugh in the face of death.

The works have a nostalgic naivety when referencing the 80’s pop cultural world of his youth, and this is often re-cast into new discordant narratives, commenting on the culture of the present day alongside his personal obsessions with the image world, isolation, technology and anxiety.

Overall, the trajectory of his work evolves in parallel to the growth of digital and online spaces, the radical shifts in British politics and a crisis in masculinity which sees the number one cause of death for young men in this country being suicide. Often strong discussions emerge around the impact of social media on mental health and the impact of digitization on the physical experience of the arts.

• Lee Cavaliere 

For recent generations, it’s songs rather than poems we recite from memory. So as Semple calls out tragedies and travesties of destroyed innocence, his mind alights on cultural narratives of vibrant darkness, celebrities and conspiracies, which are perfectly encapsulated by music whose emotional confusion reflects confusing times.

In the show’s centerpiece, A Love Song’s Not Enough, made of acrylic and spray paint on canvas, and spanning six-by-ten feet, a boxer slumps with half-closed Byzantine eyes in a tumble of marble-pale skin, haunting a divided picture plane of greys and distressed rainbows above acres of gestural abstraction, like cake frosting marshland.

– Shana Nys Dambrot (Art ltd. review)

The project was all about bringing people together. Connecting strangers and swapping fear for connection in public space.