Being with Trees

By appointment until 8 May

Being with Trees brings together a contemporary response to trees by artists who live in urban and rural environments. These painters and printmakers are associated with two contemporary organisations: The Arborealists, which includes artists from the South West, South East, Yorkshire, London and Wales, France and Ireland, and the Urban Contemporaries, whose artists live in London.

Buckmaster & French
Fagus II

Being with Trees celebrates their shared love of trees and the vital role they can play in all our lives, in terms of our Well-Being, Identity and Sociability, and our understanding of Ecology and Climatic Change. As the author Hermann Hesse observed: “When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.” At a time of international anxiety about the existential threats of the effects of global warming, the role of nature and trees in the nation’s capital city has never been more pertinent. It has been estimated that we need to plant two billion trees, as soon as possible, in an attempt to avert disaster. This exhibition thus aims, with a political slant, to raise awareness of the importance of trees in the lives of Londoners. Themes and issues explored in this exhibition are: street architecture; urban decoration; ecological dimensions; wildlife habitats; the mythical, the allegorical, the symbolic; our psychological equilibrium and well-being; trees in opposition to/in harmony with buildings; depositories of history and bearing witness; unexpected trees in unexpected places; iconic and loved trees/nuisance and unloved trees/diseased trees; and boundary markers/noise excluders/ barriers against pollution. In fact the lungs of London!

Philippa Beale
Contrasts

THE ARBOREALISTS

Following the substantial critical success of Under the Green Wood: Picturing the British Tree 2013, at St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery, the New Forest, The Arborealists emerged from this exhibition. The art critic, Andrew Lambirth, wrote an illuminating review of the exhibition’s aims that appeared at the time to be so at odds with the prevailing orthodoxy. ‘Under the Greenwood ‘ included John Constable, Paul Nash, Samuel Palmer and Graham Sutherland, alongside such contemporary artists as Graham Arnold, Philippa Beale, David Nash and Michael Porter, whose practice gives trees, forests and woods a special value and who literally have developed new perceptions of painting and language. Since then The Arborealists have had 16 exhibitions in the UK and France including ongoing site specific projects. 

Kerry Harding
Beacon Pine III

THE URBAN CONTEMPORARIES

Urban Contemporaries is a fluid group of figurative painters aiming to explore different approaches to the concept of contemporary communities in urban environments. They create ambitious responses to the urban experience, responding in ways that are of interest to their individual practice. Using drawing as a starting point and painting as the common medium, the human figure in urban surroundings is a dominant motif. They aim to reflect the many varied ‘voices’ of contemporary society and create themed work that reflects upon the urban condition. The invited artists from the Urban Contemporaries include Frank Creber, Melissa Scott-Miller, Michael Johnson, Ferha Farooqui. They introduce another kind of imagination, portraying the integration of trees into new London communities, and the varied effects of trees against regeneration and the ever-changing skyline. Work from these artists gives a symbolic, apocalyptic dimension to the exhibition.

Ferha Farooqui
An Inconvenience of Trees

THE ARBOREALISTS include

Philippa Beale   John Blandy   Stella Carr   Annabel Cullen   Tim Craven
Alex Egan   Paul Finn   Buckmaster & French   Kerry Harding
Julie Held    Natasha Lien   Paul Ridyard   Nahem Shoa   
Lesley Slight
Peter Ursem   Jacqueline Wedlake-Hatton

THE URBAN CONTEMPORARIES include

Sharon Beavan   Frank Creber   Ferha Farooqui   Annette Fernando
Sarah Lowe   Melissa Scott-Miller   Susanne du Toit   Grant Watson

ARTISTS INVITED BY THE CURATOR include

Day Bowman   Gary Cook   Alex Faulkner   Elizabeth Hannaford
Karen Keogh   Ursula Leach   Pat Phippard
Angela Rumble   Rachel Sargent   Les Williams