GALLERY visitors in Liverpool will know Jyll Bradley best for her Fragrant project based on the city’s botanical collection.

The Folkestone-born artist is returning this week to prepare a retrospective at The Bluecoat – revealing many other sides to her work.

Airports for the Lights, Shadows and Particles presents her 20-year career, from her emergence on the art scene alongside Young British Artist contemporaries, such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, to a brand new piece commissioned especially for the show.

It will include a work that was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery during her residency at Liverpool’s botanical collection following a life long interest in plants.

Bradley, whose father was a gardener, says: “I’ve always thought of gardens as a biography of a gardener or of a people and a place.

“The work isn’t really about plants, it’s actually about people. Quite naturally when you’re talking to people about gardens and flowers you start to learn their views on trade and globalisation and their sense of place.

“That was never more so than in Liverpool.”

Plants from the collection will be displayed alongside books on botany and other archival materials.