John Newling, Dear Nature

About

Explore the exhibition online: http://ow.ly/OCb830qHJyY

At the heart of Ikon’s exhibition is Dear Nature, a book published in 2018, comprising letters Newling wrote to nature every day for 81 days. The letters explore our relationship with the natural world – “part truth and reconciliation, part advocacy of an urgent need, part thoughts for future social ecologies”. In one letter he quotes from the first chapter of Genesis, after Adam and Eve are introduced: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”

Recently Newling has produced Soil Books (2019), made with soil from his garden to embody the idea of the Anthropocene, our current geological age in which human impact is evident. He is determined to grasp “what is it to know that we have affected the effects of nature/our environment… you can trace our evolution to a point where we subdued nature, but to our own cost, because we will make ourselves extinct”.

The Soil Books are sculptures, derived from Newling’s everyday experience of walking from his house into his back garden, picking up leaves on the way: “It’s like a ritual, so that every leaf in those books – the language of the books – is from my garden.” The result is book-like stacks of panels of processed soil with the leaves, pressed and gilded, on the surfaces which are then stained with watercolour. The order of the books is crucial, indicating seasonal change, and once again conveying the artist’s preoccupation with physical transformation.

Newling’s exhibition extends beyond the gallery space, with further works sited nearby in the cherry trees in Oozells Square, Brindleyplace.

The exhibition is supported by the Ikon Investment Fund.