Opening this Thursday 6.30 -8.30 Origins of the Species @jamesfreemangallery
Andy Harper, Liane Lang RA, Fantich & Young, Sol Bailey Barker, and Lesley Hilling
While often considered distinct, the natural sciences and the visual arts share similar fundamental processes: close observation and the gathering of samples, prompting original ideas through repeated experimentation. But where the sciences focus on the world around us, the arts often look within, examining not just our relationship to nature but also the very experience of being human.
‘Origins of the Species’ brings together five artists to explore where scientific disciplines and contemporary artistic practice overlap: Andy Harper, Liane Lang RA, Fantich & Young, Sol Bailey Barker, and Lesley Hilling.
Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday 16 April - all welcome.
If you would like to register to receive the PDF preview catalogue of works shortly before the show opens please contact the gallery
#contemporarysculpture #opening #gallery
#sculptures #exhibition
‘Symbiosis’
interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both.
This work seeks to explore the evolving relationship between mythology, ecology, and technology. This hybrid being inhabits the thresholds between worlds, part ancient totem, part futuristic artifact.
Functioning as a portal, this transmuting figure holds catastrophe and regeneration in tension, proposing a new mode of ecological consciousness that connect ephemeral past, volatile present, and speculative future.
#totem #postapocalyptic #contemporaryart
#contemporarysculpture #transmutation
One year since my solo show Pansentient Arboriculture @propositionstudios
Pansentient Arboriculture, proposes a system of care in which trees and entire forests are considered sentient and aware, having a form of consciousness.
This exhibition decodes our relationship with the arboreal world, or the world of trees, considering their cultural and spiritual roles, as well as practices such as agroforestry and ecological Preservation.
Drawing on the folklore of Albion, or Ancient Great Britain, and carved from the trees of Sussex, the exhibition builds a bridge to the world our ancestors lived in, extending from their knowledge.
279 Cambridge Heath Rd, London E2 0EL
#pansentientarboriculture #opening #gallery #solbaileybarker #sculpture photo Manu Valcarce @manu_valcarce_photography
Seedling featured in James Freeman gallery exhibition ‘Origins of the Species’. (Charred brushed Redwood 62 × 25 x 29cm)
Sol Bailey Barker’s practice uses sculpture as a means of reassessing and redressing the human’s relationship with the natural world, encouraging a return to a phenological existence in harmony with nature and its cycles. Totemic carvings of ash, redwood and oak bring archetypal forms from the unconscious to light, their shamanic shapes suggesting the endurance of the mythological as the accumulated wisdom of generations. Abstraction here is common culture, familiar forms and materials a way of deconstructing the detached position of the viewer. These works act as conduits for the individual to reconnect to the greater whole that is nature, fomenting a sense of empathy and belonging.
@jamesfreemangallery
#jamesfreemangal #Sculpture #artinlondon #contemporarysculpture #exhibition
Sol Bailey Barker✨
Sol Bailey Barker (b. 1987) is a British sculptor and installation artist who forges hybrid creatures that hover between ancient totems, unborn spirits, and extraterrestrial forms. Informed by technologies once seen as shamanic in their power to transform landscapes, life and death, the work imagines fluid spaces between worlds. Their abstract sculptures and immersive installations trace a arc from sacred axes to contemporary tools driving ecological and industrial change, using materials tied to agriculture and industry (wood, metal, clay and stone). Functioning like living portals the works hold catastrophe and regeneration in tension, proposing new ways of thinking ecologically across past, present, and speculative future.
#contemporaryartwork #artistspotlight #artisttowatch #creativeartiststudio #inthestudio
‘Vajra’ (The Weapon of the Gods ) means ‘divine enlightenment’ or ‘inspiration’ in Sanskrit.
Depictions of deities carrying these sacred weapons are found throughout the ancient world. Here the Vajra is transformed into an imagined evolving animal spine, playing with the language of reconstructive archeology and particle physics.
The Vajra may be a creature of the ancient world or a projection of a future entity brought to life through new technologies. Its form evokes both ancient iconography and the machinery of contemporary science, such as Laser Weapon Systems or particle accelerators.
Dimensions 3 M x 1,500M
#vajra #contemporaryart #contemporarysculpture #totem #sculpture
SAVE THE DATE
Origins of the Species
Andy Harper, Liane Lang RA, Fantich & Young, Sol Bailey Barker, and Lesley Hilling
Opening Reception:
Thursday 16 April, 6:30 - 8:30pm
While often considered distinct, the natural sciences and the visual arts share similar fundamental processes: close observation and the gathering of samples, prompting original ideas through repeated experimentation. But where the sciences focus on the world around us, the arts often look within, examining not just our relationship to nature but also the very experience of being human.
'Origins of the Species’ brings together five artists to explore where scientific disciplines and contemporary artistic practice overlap: Andy Harper, Liane Lang RA, Fantich & Young, Sol Bailey Barker, and Lesley Hilling.
Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday 16 April - all welcome.
If you would like to register to receive the PDF preview catalogue of works shortly before the show opens please contact the gallery.
Images:
1 - Fantich & Young
Apex Predator | Darwinian Voodoo | Alpha Female Ceremonial Headdress
138 x 30 x 87cm
2 - Liane Lang
Fossil Body
Printed agate crystal
25 x 20cm
3 - Sol Bailey Barker
Towards the sun
Charred Ash
187 x 48 x 25cm
4 - Andy Harper
Vogue
Oil on paper, 2010
23cm W x 28cm H / 32.5cm W x 37.5cm H framed
5 - Lesley Hilling
13 miles
Assembled found wood & objects, 2026
40cm diameter x 12.5cm D
‘Vajra’ (The Weapon of the Gods ) means ‘divine enlightenment’ or ‘inspiration’ in Sanskrit.
Depictions of deities carrying these sacred weapons are found throughout the ancient world. Here the Vajra is transformed into an imagined evolving animal spine, playing with the language of reconstructive archeology and particle physics.
The Vajra may be a creature of the ancient world or a projection of a future entity brought to life through new technologies. Its form evokes both ancient iconography and the machinery of contemporary science, such as Laser Weapon Systems or particle accelerators.
Dimensions 3 M x 1,500M
#vajra #contemporaryart #contemporarysculpture #totem #sculpture
‘The Orphic Egg’
Here, the egg is a compressed cosmos and a nervous system, a shell holding the first tremors of form.
The serpent winds up from it like a living a moving threshold between what is still unnamed and what is about to appear.
This form sits in the space where mythology, mysticism, and altered states overlap: part fossilised creation story, part signal from a speculative elsewhere.
It holds constriction and expansion in the same body, suggesting a soul or a universe that is not yet broken open, but already feeling the pressure of its own future.
The Orphic Egg represents things both bound and infinite. It signifies the Cosmos as encircled by the fiery Creative Spirit.
#contemporarysculpture #exhibition #esoteric #alchemy #steelsculptures
Meditations on Transmutation
transmutation
the action of changing or the state of being changed into another form.
The conversion or transformation of one species into another.
the alchemical process of changing base metals into gold.
The changing of one element into another by radioactive decay, nuclear bombardment, or similar processes.
paint made of raw pigments, gum Arabic, honey and rosemary oil on 160g watercolour paper
#transmutation #painting #contemporaryart #sculptures #watercolorpainting
Spiders arm and talons slide I, slide II spiders talons, slide III spiders Web, Slide IIII spinybacked orbweaver.
“If spiders disappeared, we would face famine”.
Spiders are primary controllers of insects, without spiders, all of our crops would be consumed by pests.
Spiders are carnivorous arthropods, consume a large number of preys and do not damage plants.
They have unique habitat and they live in almost all the environments. Spiders serve as buffers that limit the initial exponential growth of prey populations. The predatory spiders are classified into five major groups based on their foraging style. Prey searching ability, wide host range, ease in multiplication and polyphagous in nature make them a predator in biological pest suppression.
Species abundance of spider communities in agricultural and horticultural ecosystem can be as high as in undisturbed natural ecosystem. About 19 species in rice ecosystem, 13 species in maize, 16 species in soybean, 18 species in oil seeds, 21 species in cotton, 57 species in sugarcane, 13 species in vegetables, 11 species in fruit crops and 26 species in coconut were recorded in one study. #contemporarysculpture #symbiosis #spider #web #archive
‘Hybrid being in Transmutation’
This work seeks to explore the evolving relationship between mythology, ecology, and technology. This hybrid being inhabits the thresholds between worlds, part ancient totem, part futuristic artifact.
Functioning as a portal, this transmuting figure holds catastrophe and regeneration in tension, proposing a new mode of ecological consciousness that connect ephemeral past, volatile present, and speculative future.
noun: transmutation; plural noun: transmutations
the action of changing or the state of being changed into another form.
Biology
the conversion or transformation of one species into another.
Physics
the changing of one element into another by radioactive decay, nuclear bombardment, or similar processes.
#totem #contemporaryart
#contemporarysculpture #transmutation #postapocalyptic
