Arbour Essences in Anthropocene Dublin - Artists' Talk at Olivier Cornet Gallery - 7 June 2023

Arbour Essences in Anthropocene Dublin - Artists' Talk at Olivier Cornet Gallery - 7 June 2023

Arbour Essences in Anthropocene Dublin - Four new visions for our urban forests', is a group show running at the Olivier Cornet Gallery until 7 July 2023

The show includes new work by four of the gallery's represented artists, namely Annika Berglund, Hugh Cummins, Eoin Mac Lochlainn and Yanny Petters with a small selection of works by Belvedere College's art students.

The exhibition is sponsored by Coillte nature and is also complemented by an outdoor 'pocket' urban forest installation in collaboration with Simon O'Donnell from the Urban Farm project at Belvedere College.

As part of the group show he co-curated, the author and writer Paddy Woodworth will chair a panel talk with the 4 artists

at 6:30pm

on Wednesday 7 June 2023,

Olivier Cornet Gallery, 3 Great Denmark Street Dublin.

You are invited to attend this free event but booking is advised as seats are limited. Please email info@oliviercornetgallery.com or phone/text 087 288 7261 to book your seat.

“It’s been exceptionally exciting, stimulating – and humbling -- to assist, however indirectly, in the development of an exhibition by four artists as talented and as responsive to environmental issues as Annika Berglund, Hugh Cummins, Eoin Mac Lochlainn, and Yanny Petters, with a co-curator as generous, insightful and experienced as Olivier Cornet.

And, after many months of periodic discussions around the theme of urban trees, it’s been a breath-taking pleasure to walk into Olivier’s gallery and see such beautiful, poignant and sensitive work on the walls. Annika’s magical evocation of the unseen wood-wide web that sustains trees from beneath our feet, Hugh’s delicate use of wood itself as a material for subtly allusive art, Eoin’s heartfelt, heart-breaking elegies for individual trees loved and lost, and Yanny’s innovative and exquisite celebration of trees in Dublin’s historical topography – all engage us intimately with the role of trees in making our cities more liveable, healthier, happier spaces. And they all hint at the catastrophe we are inviting by tearing the interconnected fabric of life to breaking point.

It was an added delight to see the loving sketches of Katy apple trees by Belvedere College students, adding a dimension to the show that is both youthful, and rooted in the gallery’s location on the college’s property. And the installation of birch trees and ferns in the basement frontage showed visitors to the gallery how nature can bring vivid life to neglected city spaces.

In our panel discussion with the artists, we will discuss their practices and techniques and reflect on the relationship between art and environment, and how this relationship can enhance environmental awareness, without losing artistic integrity. I look forward to it very much.”
Paddy Woodworth

For more information about the show, please visit the exhibition's page.

Image: shout out to our talk in the Business Post (printed on 4 June 2023), The online version of the article was included in Philip Carton's 'Events Calendar, Your guide to the best exhibitions, talks and auctions around the country this week'