Cultural Reforesting Exhibition
Mónica Alcázar-Duarte, Ah Muzen Ca. Protector of the Melipona beecheii. Yucatán. 2023.
You are a tree, and together we make a forest. You are a cell, you are a bird, you are the clouds, you are the nutrients in the soil. You are the spiderwebs between the branches and the breeze between the leaves. We are the forest.
Cultural Reforesting asks the big question: How can we renew our relationship with nature? In this exhibition, the artists remind us that we not only have a relationship with nature but also that we are nature. We are human animals. Together, with our more-than-human neighbours, we are a growing, singing, howling forest.
Cultural Reforesting brings together a group of artists, the pulsating environment of Orleans House Gallery’s woodland and gardens, and all who step (or fly, or crawl or take root) into the gallery ecosystem. The exhibition, with you, will bring something to the air, the soil, the ingenuity, of our shared planet. You will feel the wind on your nose as you re-engage your human animal, through all of your senses and your soaring imagination.
Many of the artworks in this exhibition are a result of our Cultural Reforesting programme, which has supported artists research projects since 2021. Each artist’s research has its own focus, touching on the complexity of the ecological crisis. They consider how each of us might respond to the crisis, as an imaginative collaborator in – and contributor to – all our ecosystems.
Artists in this exhibition include:
Finn Chatwyn-Ross of Crescendo
Adam Kammerling and Jess Ihetejoh
Andrew Merritt of Something & Son
Harun Morrison and Kim Coleman
Thank you to our Cultural Reforesting exhibition partners:
Richmond Arts and Ideas Festival
Royal Holloway, University of London
St Mary’s University, Twickenham
About the Cultural Reforesting programme:
Cultural Reforesting is an artist-led research programme initiated by Richmond Arts Service, responding to the ecological crisis. We support artists to explore local solutions to this crisis, and feel that the local biosphere and Orleans House Gallery, with its vibrant woodland, gardens and creative ecosystem, can be a place where all come to collaborate, find a community and make a difference, no matter how personal or small.
Notes on terminology in the exhibition:
Ecological crisis: A lost relationship to our local and global ecosystems is at the centre of the current crisis. Choices we make in London, and have historically made, reverberate around the ecosystems globally. All the cascading issues stem from losing our understanding that we are human animals and part of nature. These issues include climate, biodiversity, pollution, mental health, environmental justice, and more.
Eco-centrism: A belief that the natural world has value and inherent rights, independent of its usefulness to humans. Eco-centricism is a core value of Cultural Reforesting. We acknowledge that the work of eco-centricism is never complete – we always strive to be more eco-centric and to work within a more eco-centric framework and philosophy.
More-than-human species: An eco-centric term referring to living beings – such as plants, animals, fungi, etc. – who are not human. The term emphasises that we share our planet with many species and helps us consider their lives, rights and experiences.
Gallery ecosystem: Orleans House Gallery and its surrounding grounds – the woodland, grassland, courtyard and everything in it, including insects, trees, human visitors, artworks, birds, gallery staff and more.
About the artwork pictured above:
Artist Mónica Alcázar-Duarte says, “Looking back at my practice, I see two concepts that I have embraced throughout. Firstly, I have always been passionate about taking my work ‘off the wall’, of finding alternative ways of presenting images. This has led to my presenting work in sculptural installation, in performance, and connected with new technologies such as augmented reality. The second, and more defining concept that I always embrace, is the pulling together of multiple subjects within each piece of work. I then like to shape the interaction of these themes to provoke a set of complex, nuanced and implied connections between them.
I now recognise that this interest in the reconciliation of diverse topics comes from my own attempts as an artist to navigate the contradictions of my existence as a Mexi/European, a Mestiza of Indigenous descent, and as one who embraces decolonisation but who also participates in colonial systems. This navigation of two disparate worlds within me has led to me thinking of myself as a ‘Nepantlista’. Nepantla is a notion used originally by the Aztecs to express the conflict and negotiation they had to go through from the beginning of colonial times.”
