Our presentation of The Hidden at Messums Wiltshire underlines aspects at the heart of our programming. Appreciation and empathy for nature underpins this ethos and we endeavour to support artists whose work helps to expand our awareness and understanding of the natural environment. We advocate that hearing about the natural world from those who commit time to listening can help shape our own sense of interconnectedness.
Tom Waugh’s work presents the paradox that we enhabit. Running through his practice is a desire to express mankind’s unrefined relationship with the natural world. We are both unaware and appreciative of nature, being at its mercy at the same time as seeking to make the most of it. His sculptures are infused with the uncertainty and irony of humanity’s pursuit of progress, playfully twisting our ideas of time.
Shaun Fraser’s work frequently comments upon notions of identity, links to landscape and connections with place. His practice questions how the landscapes, spaces and places which we inhabit form us and can be translated through personal engagement.
WILTSHIRE
Laurence Edwards Integrating Landscape, Inspiration from Australia
A sculptor who holds a tuning fork to the uneasiness that represents our relationship with the environment, the work of Laurence Edwards explores the complex relationship between man, nature and the landscape. His figures look back and forth, connecting ancient history with our present and future. They percolate with contemporary doubt, evoke human vulnerability, and have the ability to emotively connect across place and time.
WILTSHIRE
Inner Landscape
6 May – 12 June 2023
PREVIEW: Friday 5 May, from 6pm, free event BOOK HERE
The artists included in this exhibition are connected by their emotional and psychological engagement with the Australasian landscape and outback topography. It is this deeply-rooted commitment to a sense of place that enlivens their imagination and fuels their practice – the landscape consciously or unconsciously entering their work and, ultimately, their values.
The exhibition includes work by Euan Macleod, Ros Auld, John Walker, Dianne Fogwell and members of the Papunya Tula Artist group – Ray James Tjangala, Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, Florrie Watson Napangati and Leonie Napaltjarri.
Reframing our relationship with landscape Tyga Helme takes our eye down into the undergrowth to shift the aesthetic perspective onto what is less often seen, redrawing our sense of beauty around the undergrowth.
"Drawing and painting connect me closer than anything else to nature. After a few weeks these places become so familiar that they almost become a part of me. I begin to see them when I close my eyes and I once even had a dream that I was myself a bramble. However, the process also underlines how wrong my assumptions can be, how little I know and understand. I expect to find one thing but when I look there is always something else, always something more surprising."
Tyga Helme
WILTSHIRE
TALKS PROGRAMME AND DISCUSSION
Saturday 3 June 10am - 5pm Morning Session: The true cost of consumption -should we be doing this differently or not at all? Afternoon Session: Creativity and solutions. We made the problem, what are the ideas to fix it?
£10 for the day, Members and students can attend for free Lunch available separately
Our Active Environmentalism programme builds our shared knowledge about ways of seeing and considering our relationship with our environment. It is based on the premise that individual decisions tend to be the right ones when given access to sufficient information. Collectively they add up to global change.
With the help of a number of environmental experts, our symposium on 3 June will shed light on the choices that confront us as individuals and what we can do collectively to mitigate the damage through different ways of seeing and thinking.
We will also hear about inspiring technological advances being made to resolve the many issues we face and how to facilitate further changes in our way of thinking about our relationship with the environment.
