ASHMOLEAN NOW: GARRY FABIAN MILLER
FREE EXHIBITION open 26 Nov 2026 – 13 Jun 2027
Gallery 8
This is the sixth in the Ashmolean NOW exhibition series, where contemporary artists are invited to create new work inspired by the Ashmolean’s historical collections.
This exhibition brings together two British artists separated by nearly two centuries, but united by a shared commitment to landscape, light, and the transformative power of place: Garry Fabian Miller and the 19th-century Romantic painter Samuel Palmer.
Garry Fabian Miller is one of the most progressive figures in contemporary photography. He has worked without a camera since the 1980s, to explore the possibilities of light as both medium and subject. Living on Dartmoor, his work has evolved out of daily walks in nature.
Mainly working with Cibachrome paper and traditional darkroom chemistry throughout his career, Fabian Miller has experimented with extremely long exposure times that can last for many hours, with time itself becoming a key artistic focus.
Left: Midwinter Blaze III, 2019. Right: Looking West, 2026, Garry Fabian. Both light, water, Lambda c-print from dye destruction print © Garry Fabian Miller
Between the Moon and Hawthorn presents works from throughout Fabian Miller’s career, spanning from his sea horizon photographs to new large-scale digital prints exhibited for the first time.
Left: Shadow Moon, 2023. Centre: Dancing Sun (i), 1986 –2020. Right: Absolved, 2022. Garry Fabian Miller. Light, water, Lambda c-print from dye destruction prints © Garry Fabian Miller
Fabian Miller has long described Palmer as a guiding presence in his artistic development. He first encountered Palmer’s works in the 1970s during a visit to the Ashmolean and was struck by their ‘transcendent mystery’.
Shepherds under a Full Moon, Samuel Palmer, c. 1829, drawing © Ashmolean Museum
Samuel Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism, producing pastoral paintings, drawings and etchings. This exhibition features his early Shoreham landscapes from the Ashmolean’s own collections. The Darent valley is depicted as a semi-paradise, a place of mystery and vision often bathed in sepia tones under the glow of day – or moonlight.
The gallery pairs the two artists’ work in a daylight and a moonlight section, inviting viewers to trace visual and philosophical continuities between Palmer’s Romantic vision and Fabian Miller’s practice.
As part of the ‘Ashmolean NOW’ exhibition series, the show presents a contemporary perspective on the Museum’s historic collections, foregrounding photography as a site of experimentation and reflection.
All works by Garry Fabian Miller are on loan courtesy of the artist.
