Julian Perry | Where Grew The Tree

About

There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
In Memoriam, Alfred Lord Tennyson

Disintegration, loss and the tragedy of Climate breakdown provide the context and inspiration for the artist’s haunting new paintings.

The pernicious effects of rising sea levels and resulting coastal erosion on England’s Suffolk coast have provided the artist with powerful images. Perry has transformed found locations into paintings imbued with current anxieties about environmental catastrophe.

Perry’s debt to the British landscape tradition compounds the poignancy of the works. The irony that it is Suffolk, county of Constable and Gainsborough that is dissolving into the sea, is not lost on the artist.

For the first time Perry will include an installation of three-dimensional works that echo the traditional Diptych form: two paintings and a mirror combined within transparent boxes.

Since Perry’s last show at Austin Desmond in 2012 his work has attracted considerable international attention, including exhibiting at the 2015 Venice Biennale and featuring in papers published by the Paul Mellon Center for studies in British Art at Yale.

A larger version of this exhibition will be held at Southampton City Art Gallery in June 2021.