Into the Woods
30 May - 5 July 2025
Art Exchange

Launch event: Thursday 29th May
6-8pm
Speechs at 6:30pm

Still from Treow of Time by Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, 2023

Into the Wood creates a platform for artists who question our relationship with the natural world around us.

Includes work by Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, Adam Broomberg, Rebecca Moss, Abigail Lane, Kenji Lim, Jevan Watkins Jones and Theo Panagopoulos.

Taking inspiration from poet and artist William Blake (1757 – 1827), it explores 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.

Through exploring ancient traditions and speculating about the future, the artists in this show 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 a new way of seeing. As William Blake was well aware, the politics of this green and pleasant land are never far from the surface.

Image: Still from ‘Herd Mentality’, 2022. Courtesy of Rebecca Moss

Admission free

This exhibition was made possible with the kind support of the Bean Trust.

Art Exchange
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester
CO4 3SQ
T: 01206 873184
gallery@essex.ac.uk

OPENING HOURS

Tuesdays to Fridays, from 11.30am to 5pm

Saturdays, by appointment. Email jess@essex.ac.uk