Birches and Berries.
An installation for Plant Culture, an arts council collection exhibition, commissioned by the Attenborough gallery for their space in 2016. The work saw the growth and material transformations of a variety of edible berry bushes growing between birch trees. The installation continued my interest and research into agroforestry.
Commissioned and edited by Jeremy Webster
#jeremywebster
#agroforestry
#artandecology
#contemoraryart
#sculpture
The book of beginnings is slowly taking shape. There are 12 more pages to add as the 3rd set of moss spore papers are coming out of their high humidity phase in a few days. This small work will have taken some 6 months to form and evolve. It has given me so many thoughts and insights into the visual cartography of the Earth’s early beginnings and, for that, I am very grateful.
#beginnings
#artandecology
#books
#contempoaryart
Remembering making lead Filofaxes on a market stall in 1989 as part of a commission for the Tyne International 1990, as part of the Gateshead Garden festival. I enjoy market stalls as a space of transactions.
It was great working in the north east, rammed with good artists and very able curators.
#filofaxes
#contempoaryart
Happy birthday Sir David Attenborough
A tiny regret and a wonderful moment
Amongst the meetings I have had with inspirational people there is one that still gives me a tiny regret.
I was invited to the celebration launch of a major refurbishment and extension to an arts centre in Leicester. I was happy to respond to the invite. The arts centre was named as the Attenborough Arts Centre after its founder Sir Richard Attenborough. The Attenborough art centre pioneered the idea of an arts centre specifically designed for diverse communities, with accessibility and inclusivity as their core values, and they encouraged openness from audiences, performers and staff alike; it was and still is an impressive space.
I arrived at the centre to see a large dining space with round tables making a circular shape around the room with a circular table in the middle. As I walked in I recognised many people from the art world seated at their table. I looked for my name place. Somebody came up to me and steered me to the table in the centre laid out for three, maybe four, people.
The first name I saw was Susan Attenborough the second was Sir David Attenborough. I was to have lunch with a person whom I admired, even loved, for so many years.
And so David and Susan arrived and I introduced myself. David went straight in on the possible reasons Minke whales had been beached on the Norfolk coast. He and Susan were brilliant but I just could not speak. I can’t even remember what we had to eat. Meal finished there was rush to our table with people wanting selfies and stuff. Susan was clearly their to protect her dad from too many requests. I hadn’t even got a smart phone but I did have a copy of Dear Nature in my bag but didn’t have to nerve to give him a copy.
I thanked him for being him and skulked away. It is a tiny regret that I was so starstruck by this event but I will always remember that kind and beautiful human that I sat next to and who smiled at me when I described Minke whales as Milky whales…oh dear.
Studying the 3rd set of moss spore papers this morning. These are 19 days since the paper was misted with rain water. Through my eyes they are landscapes of the beginning languages of the Earth; bacteria to fungal massing to moss growth.
I plan to let this set evolve through some 50 days to better see the changes and evolutions on each page. I hope that, eventually, they will become the book of beginnings as a work accompanied by live installations of the transforming processes…away to go still but exciting times.
#beginnings
#books
#contempraryart
#artandecology
#moss
Dear Nature, John Newling's book presented next to Gustav Metzger's typewriter at The Right to Protest Exhibition 2025.
@newlingjohn wrote daily letters to nature. The letters explore our relationship to the natural ecology. Part truth and reconciliation, part advocacy of an urgent need, part thoughts for future social ecologies, the letters reflect an intense period of time that Newling spent trying to find where here is. In parallel to the letters there are images of 81 days of growth of Linum usitatissimum plant.
The late Gustav Metzger worked with ecology early on, and later a keen ecological activist in particular his Serpentine Extinction Marathon, and Remember Nature focussed on what we are doing to other species. He appreciated the Earth system as @alexis.bamforth_eec recalls - them both reveling in the rotting stuff hanging in plastic bags from his balcony. A mutual appreciation for the ideas and new life that are generated from decay.
Above works presented at The Right to Protest Exhibition 2025 is the first PRO RADIX project, and was in collaboration with Museum of Unrest. A full two week programme of subverting events by artists and designers at @greatorexstreet_e1 and across the city of London.
Thanks to Christos Hatjoullis for loan of Gustav's typewriter.
#dearnature #johnnewling #metzgertypewriter #gustavmetzger #proradix museumofunrest therighttoprotest freedom care themorethanhuman
Soil Books
2019
Condition checking and photographing these works today before they leave the studio in a few weeks time.
#soil
#books
#artandnature
#contempoarysculpture
Human to Nature , Nature to human rhizoids
My work is giving me a set of distinct forms and relationships seen through transformational material processes that help me observe a language of connections and collaborations in Nature. The moss works are a way of learning.
They have helped with understanding the interconnectedness of bacteria to fungi to moss growth. Further to this they have in my understanding of soil evolutions and the relationship of earth to atmosphere. The works have steered me to learn more about Cyanobacteria that formed some 2.7 billion years ago. This bacteria, still in existence, characterised by a distinctive blue-green colour, was the first organism to release oxygen through the action of sunlight and splitting water releasing Oxygen. It transformed the Earth’s atmosphere and paved the way to the planet we know.
Art is a transforming process and vital to our being in the world. Art, at times, joyously connects us to the place where we are. It can, momentarily, move our gaze from our day to day stresses and worries, widening our vision and giving us a more truthful perspective on what it is to be a human. It can be a glue to other connections; a kind of human to nature rhizoid; a slow time process contributing to being in the world and being in the world with others.
#artandecolgy
#books
#landscapeart
#contemporaryart
All these events happened in and on the surface of this work over a period 107 days.
Beginnings; moss spore papers 1st test, pressed and air dried.
#artandecology
#contempoaryart
#moss
Two of the twelve papers that are part of the 3rd set of test moss spore pages. These are only a week into the water misted stage but already the surface is showing signs of the essential bacterial constructs that bring the collaboration of fungal and moss to growth.
#naturedrawings
#bacteria
#artandecology
