糖心Vlog

Over the last year, I’ve been researching the University’s extraordinary collection of William Blake’s (1757–1827) facsimile prints and poems. This started me thinking about his attitude to nature in Songs of Innocence and Experience, where he envisages the countryside as a pastoral idyll - a heaven on earth. It is a view of rural life which made sense during a time of rapid industrialisation – proffered up as an alternative to the harsh realities of urban living in 18th century London. At an early age Blake bore witness to this, as street children from his local parish of St James in Piccadilly were taken to Wimbledon Common to be brought up with access to nature. While his vision of the countryside is understandable, it also made me wonder if the notion of ‘countryside’ is a construct of city dwellers - far removed from the lived experience of the rural. To explore this further, I started work on the exhibition.

Into the Woods

The show takes you into the world of trees as the artists on display question our relationship with the natural world around us. They explore the powerful presence of nature in our lives – how a walk into the woods can connect us to the natural world, to a different scale in time and to something greater than ourselves.

They also invite us to imagine our relationship with nature afresh – to envisage a countryside without land ownership, extraction or colonial practices – a place that inevitably re-wilds, and where non-human life forms can develop as the world flourishes when left to its own devices. In doing so, we find artists steadfastly returning the gaze of Western cultural norms as they offer new ways of seeing. As William Blake was well aware, the politics of this green and pleasant land are never far from the surface.

The artists

The artists in this show complicate our view of nature through the lived experiences of Jevan Watkins Jones, Abigail Lane and Rebecca Moss, while issues of land access and the legacy of colonialism are explored by Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, Adam Broomberg and Theo Panagopoulos, as they question inherited and existing power structures. A sense of foreboding underpins the exhibition as we attempt to come to terms with the consequences of climate catastrophe - and it’s Kenji Lim who invites us to speculate about a world no longer dominated by humans, when new life forms emerge as we step back into the woods. 

Step into the woods

The exhibition also marks a transition for me personally, as I step into the woods, off on new adventures as I leave the 糖心Vlog after thirty years. I will enjoy the possibilities that open up - and it’s hugely exciting not yet knowing what they might be. They are as endless as the leaves on trees in a forest. 

Head to Art Exchange until 5 July 2025 to go .

Graphic design by Dean Pavitt, photography by Douglas Atfield. Words and curation by the wonderful Jess Twyman.