Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2016

3 September 2016 - 1 January 2017

The Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2016 presents a shortlist of 60 exceptional environmental photographs, from a submission of ten thousand images by photographers and filmmakers from across seventy countries. The exhibition will be on show at Royal Geographical Society, before touring to Grizedale Forest, supported for the fourth year by Forestry Commission England.

The photographs and films reflect the urgent environmental and social concerns that surround us today. Topics include recent natural catastrophes induced by the changing climate, the effects of population growth on the urban environment, and the resourceful ways in which the human race is preserving the earth’s biodiversity.

The exhibition at Grizedale Forest will be accompanied by a portfolio showcase by Pedram Yazdani, winner of the Forestry Commission England People Nature and Economy Award 2016.

www.epoty.org       @EPOTYcomp      #EPOTY16

Seeing the Forest Through the Trees

18 September - 6 December 2015

The lifestyles of plants are a source of inspiration in this unusual living exhibition at Grizedale Forest as part of the AND Festival 2015.

Over the course of evolution plants have developed their own peculiar body shapes, lifestyles and modes of reproduction. Celebrating plants lives, the artworks invite the audience to inquire into the plant behaviours, their ability to think, fantasize and dream.

Featuring international artists Brandon Ballengee, Karl Heinz Jeron, Chiara Esposito, Špela Petrič, Dimitris Stamatis, Jasmina Weiss, Pei-Ying Lin, Allison Kudla, Kathy High and Oliver Kellhammer.

Curated by Monika Bakke.

Image by Chris Foster

Plant Sex Consultancy

Špela Petrič, Dimitris Stamatis, Jasmina Weiss, Pei-Ying Lin

Image by Chris Foster

Plant Sex Consultancy

Špela Petrič, Dimitris Stamatis, Jasmina Weiss, Pei-Ying Lin

Image by Chris Foster

Plant Sex Consultancy

Špela Petrič, Dimitris Stamatis, Jasmina Weiss, Pei-Ying Lin

Image by Chris Foster

When Plants Sing

Karl Heniz Jeron

Image by Chris Foster

When Plants Sing

Karl Heinz Jeron

State of Becoming

Allison Kudla

Ephemerella Ignita Variation

Brandon Balengee

Dream of Flying

Chiara Esposito

Becoming a Plant: Resurrection Project

Kathy High

Hyperorganisms

Oliver Kellhammer

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AND Festival 2015

18 - 20 September 2015  

Abandon Normal Devices (AND) Festival is a dynamic festival of ground-breaking art, digital culture and new cinema, taking place in Grizedale Forest between Fri 18- Sun 20 September 2015. This Autumn, in collaboration with the Forestry Commission England’s Forest Art Works programme, Abandon Normal Devices will transform Grizedale Forest in the heart of the Lake District into an exhilarating and illuminating retreat that will reveal the secret architecture of the forest through a programme of artworks, experiences, trails and film happenings.

Artists, designers, scientists and filmmakers have been brought together by AND to explore the woodlands and nature’s processes, examining the forest from a different viewpoint informed by the newest technology. The programme will give visitors new sensory perspectives on the forest, through the eyes and ears of plants, animals and machines. Including one of the first groups shows dedicated to understanding plant intelligence, an alternative communication system powered by the forests natural energy, the opportunity to experience the fantastical forest through the eyes of an animal and the creation of a love hotel for insects.

Featuring new commissions and artworks by artists Liam Young & Tim Maughan, Marshmallow Laser Feast, Joshua Soaffer, Brid A, Brandon Ballongee, Jen Southern, Matthew Plummer-Fernandez and Isabella Rossellini.

Abandon the obvious. Prepare to be offline. Leave for the woods!

Searchers by Jen Southern

Peak Simulator by Matthew Plummer-Fernandez

Image by Chris Foster

Love Motel for Insects by Brandon Balengee

Image by Chris Foster

Spreadkom by Brid-A

Image by Lucy Barker

BFI Love Season Drive In

Night of the Living Deadwood Workshop

Image by Lucy Barker

Where the City Can't See by Liam Young

Image by Chris Foster

Green Porno by Isabella Rossellini

Image by Lucy Barker

In the Eyes of the Animal by Marshmallow Laser Feast

Image by Luca Marziale

Origami Space Race by Saso Sedlacek

Image by Chris Foster

PROGRAMME HIGHLIGHTS

In the Eyes of the Animal  Marshmallow Laser Feast

A new commission enabling audiences to encounter England’s forests anew through an immersive virtual reality experience, told by the inhabitants of the forest. Creative collective Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) delight in exploring the line between virtual & real-world experiences and with this project will be taking audiences to a unique virtual reality setting created specifically for the Forest. This piece was filmed using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or ‘drones’ and bespoke 360º cameras, and is set to a binaural soundtrack using audio recordings sourced from the surrounding woodland.

Seeing the Forest Through The Trees / Various Artists

This topical and enlightening exhibition dedicated to the lifestyles of plants, features artworks which celebrate plants as active and autonomous beings perceiving the world in ways both alien and familiar to us. From looking at plant intelligence to the queer sex of plants these works will demonstrate the need to understand plants on their own terms. Featuring world class artists Karl Heinz Jeron, Chiara Esposito, Spela Petric, Dimitris Stamatis and Jasmina Weiss, Pei- Ying Lin. Curated by Monika Bakke.

Love Motel for Insects  Brandon Ballongee

The UK Premiere of a new iteration of Love Motel for Insects, site specific to Grizedale Forest, will be a large-scale living sculpture for the forest inviting insects from across the forest to stay at the Love Motel for the festival. This sculpture will be on site for a month using ultra-violet lights on enormous sculpted canvases to attract an array of bugs and insects, the motel will create an opportunity for people to interact with the rarely seen nocturnal arthropods.

Spreadkom  Brid A

Spreadkom is an alternative communication system created especially for the forest by Italian collaborators Brid A, The new commission will encourage you to think about our forgotten and hidden abilities to communicate, distributed throughout the forest will be a series of devices, all powered by air, water or sunlight. These devices will be able to communicate with each other and with listeners (visitors) by sending different sound codes, mimicking the natural sounds of the forest. Spreadkom avoids the use of a central operation unit based network like GPS or internet and emphasises alternative ways of communication and orientation without relying on standard technology that permit all sorts of abuse by the possibility of tracking or spying.

Where the City Can’t See  Liam Young

From a viewing pontoon deep within the forest, we can see the landscape through the eyes of the machines that construct it. Revealed via emerging technologies of laser scan surveyors, this short film seen through observation equipment, exposes a vibrant and hidden underground community. Where the City Can’t See is a prelude to the world’s first fiction film made entirely from data by author Tim Maughan and designed and directed by speculative architect Liam Young.

The majority of the programme taking place in Grizedale Forest is FREE with a small number of events being ticketed. The full programme including the film programme, further screenings, installations, online projects, public realm interventions, debates, workshops and live events, will be revealed at the end of July 2015. Tickets will also be released at the end of July along with camping options for festival visitors.

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Abandon Normal Devices (AND) Festival 2015 is hosted by partners Forestry Commission England’s Forest Art Works programme and supported using public funding by Arts Council England with additional support from South Lakeland District Council and the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Participating partners include Lakes Culture, Kendal Calling, Lancaster University Eden Arts, Florence Mine and Heart of Glass, HOME, Drugo More, Cumbria Bio-diversity Centre, FACT, The Brewery Kendal.

Abandon Normal Devices is a commissioning agency and a catalyst for new approaches to art-making and digital invention. We create ground breaking projects which challenge the definitions of art and moving image with a distinct emphasis on creative enquiry and provocations. AND brings together an eclectic mix of academics, filmmakers, scientists and anarchists to actively push the boundaries of audience experience and arts production. Inviting artists to hijack the imagination, by developing projects which abandon traditional settings and partnerships.

The AND portfolio consists of film happenings, exhibitions, performances, online projects, residencies, public realm interventions and a roaming biennial festival. AND Festival is the UK’s first roaming festival of cinema, art and digital culture, which maps fresh geographical and digital domains every two years. It takes place nationally and internationally and is a catalyst for partners and artists to explore different contexts and curatorial models. AND was established in 2009, as a unique partnership between Cornerhouse, FACT and folly. AND is funded by Arts Council England.

andfestival.org.uk        @ANDfestival

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Eden Restored: The Mesopotamian Marshes of Iraq

Esme Allen, winner Forestry Commission Exhibition Award 2015

Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015

18 July - 7 September 2015

Photojournalist Esme Allen travelled to Iraq in 2012 with Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to support and document the work of the organisation Nature Iraq in the Mesopotamian Marshes.

The photos are a beautiful and fascinating account of the lives of indigenous ‘Marsh Arabs’, whose lives in the marshes of Iraq were devastated by large scale draining of their homeland by Saddam Hussein in the 1990s. After the fall of the regime the arid marshes were re-flooded when people broke through the embankments holding back the water. The return of the plants, animals and community to this unique landscape speaks of the resilience of people and environment to respond and be restored after ecological destruction and crisis.

This year the Forestry Commission England Exhibition Award will be shown in tandem with the Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2015, giving one photographer the chance to display a portfolio of work focussing on one environmental story in depth, outdoors in the grounds of Grizedale Forest.

THANKS

This exhibition would not be possible without Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, the Centre for Middle Eastern Plants and Nature Iraq.

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We Find The Body Difficult to Speak

Patrick Farmer and Sarah Hughes

15 - 26 May 2015, performance 15 May 6:30 - 7:30pm

Patrick Farmer and Sarah Hughes present We Find the Body Difficult to Speak, a new body of work made in response to a series of residencies at Grizedale Forest throughout 2014 and 2015.

The work comprises a series of text scores that form the basis of a number of sound, video and performance works – all of which have been produced in and around Grizedale Forest. These will be exhibited and performed in the galleries at Grizedale Forest Visitor Centre on Friday May 15th 2015. The work builds on the recently published book Yew Grotesque by Patrick Farmer, a text-based engagement with listening written in response to walking at Grizedale and residing in the wooden cabin on the fringe of the forest. The residency and publication were made possible through a partnership between Forestry Commission England and Sound and Music. 

This new work makes direct reference to a form of composition that emerged in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s through the work of artists such as John Cage, George Brecht, and Yoko Ono. These artists questioned the limits of composition and influenced many movements connected with minimalism and conceptual art by expanding ideas around authorship and participation, as well as exploring the boundaries of artistic disciplines.

Since 2008 Farmer and Hughes have curated Compost and Height, an online platform for contemporary music and its associated disciplines, which include writing, sculpture and field recording. Both artists have performed and exhibited internationally, including the John Cage Centenary Celebration at the BBC Proms 2012. They co-edit Wolf Notes, a journal that reflects on current music practices, and have independent practices that explore sculpture, writing, sound and composition. Sarah Hughes is the current Composer in Residence at South London Gallery.

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Guardians of the Areng Valley

Luke Duggleby, winner Forestry Commission Exhibition Award 2014

Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2014

15 November 2014 - 1 March 2015

Forestry Commission England is delighted to present Guardians of the Areng Valley by photographer Luke Duggleby, recipient of the inaugural Forestry Commission England Exhibition Award. The award is part of the Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2014 and was selected by Forestry Commission England Director Ian Gambles.

This exhibition is the world premiere of a significant body of work by Duggleby. The photographs shown in the exhibition present Duggleby’s journey into the Cardamom Forest in Southwest Cambodia, focusing on a group of Buddhist monks pioneering a small but influential environmental movement aimed at reversing forest destruction to protect the indigenous peoples and endangered species of the remote Areng Valley.

England’s Public Forests provide a suitably inspiring location to present this exhibition and are the perfect setting in which to reflect on the wider global issues and concerns relating to our environment. The threat faced by woods and forests, to the people and species that inhabit them is a global one. They are places not only of special ecological value but of great cultural significance. However far too often they are perceived only as a resource or perhaps even a hurdle to overcome in the rapid development of land. Duggleby’s photographs are evidence of these opposing perspectives and the conflict in which the latter often prevails.

Duggleby has been a professional photographer working in Asia since 2004. Using Bangkok as his base he regularly travels the continent and further afield shooting assignments for some of the world’s most respected publications and NGOs as well as undertaking personal projects. His images have featured in many respected photography competitions and have been published by clients ranging from The Sunday Times, National Geographic, The Guardian, Greenpeace, Monocle and The New York Times.

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Guardians of the Areng Valley Symposium

14 November 2014

The exhibition Guardians of the Areng Valley launches at Grizedale Forest during a fortnight of art exhibitions, music and events taking place to launch Lakes Culture, an exciting new project to establish the Lake District as the UK's leading rural cultural destination.

As part of this celebration we are proud to be hosting a symposium supported by Lakes Culture. Luke Duggleby will introduce the exhibition and will be joined by guest speakers Angus Nurse, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Middlesex University and David Pritchard, international consultant; arts & environment.

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Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2014

19 July - 2 November 2014

Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year is an international showcase for the very best in environmental photography and video. The selected works examine issues such as innovation, sustainable development, biodiversity, poverty, climate change, human rights, culture, natural disasters and population growth. Honouring amateurs and professionals of all ages, it provides an opportunity for photographers to share images of environmental and social issues with international audiences and to enhance our understanding of the causes, consequences and solutions to climate change and social inequality.

The Environmental Photographer of the Year, launched by CIWEM and sponsored by Atkins, has steadily attracted an increasing number of photographers, of all ages and from all over the world. The images in this year's exhibition were selected from over 10,000 entries and judged on impact, composition, originality and technical ability by the esteemed panel comprising Paul Horton, Director of Membership and Development, CIWEM; Brigitte Lardinois, Deputy Director of Photography and the Archive Research Centre at University of the Arts London; Tim Parkin, landscape photographer and Editor of On Landscape; and David Tonkin, Chief Executive Officer, UK & Europe, Atkins.

The exhibition comprises a wide range of photographic responses to their subject, from the immediately shocking to the beautiful and humorous. Each photographer’s work is evidence of a determined commitment to capture and present the stories of people and places on the front line of environmental and social change. We hope that you find the exhibition engaging and thought provoking and that this platform provides an opportunity for increased learning and understanding about the critical environmental challenges faced by communities and how together we might respond.

The project is supported by Forestry Commission England, through a regional exhibition tour and for the first time this year a solo exhibition award selected by Ian Gambles, Director, Forestry Commission England.

Tuyet Trinh Do

Fishing net making in Mekong Delta, Vietnam, 2012

Prasanta Biswas

Rainwater collection, 2012

Bogumil Kruzel

Man in the face of nature VII, 2013

Ashley Cooper

Costal Erosian near Hornsea, 2013

Luke Duggleby

Wrapping a surviving tree, 2013

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Lost & Found?

Artists’ geographies of the landscape-archive: Trace, loss and the impulse to preserve in the Anthropocene Age

Edwina fitzPatrcik

12 April - 29 June 2014

Edwina fitzPatrick’s Arts and Humanities Research Council funded practice-based PhD with Forestry Commission England and Glasgow School of Art has investigated how national and international approaches to sited art in the landscape have changed over the last 50 years, including how this (often temporary) artwork might be archived. The Lost & Found? exhibition focuses on Grizedale’s part in this history and how the sited artworks have resisted the preservation impulse, often disappearing back into the landscape leaving seemingly little or no trace.

Creating a comprehensive timeline of the 37 years of artists’ residencies and projects in the Forest has proved remarkably difficult, so trace, loss and our impulse to preserve, have been recurrent themes in fitzPatrick's attempts to archive this rich history which is manifested through The Lost and Found digital archive and the Missing Persons Files.

The Lost and Found archive is an interactive digital archive, featuring all known artworks sited in Grizedale Forest for a week or more, since 1977. It deliberately fuses the artworks with the place that they were created for. The Missing Persons’ Files display the chronology of the Grizedale artists’ residencies from their beginning in 1977, initiated by Peter Davies from Northern Arts (the then Regional Arts Association for northern England) in liaison with Bill Grant from the Forestry Commission at Grizedale Forest.

The Anxious Roots and Routes videos aim to visualise how a city dweller who is new to the Forest, might feel when entering it for the first time. Would they feel exhilaration, or anxiety? The videos visualise her attempts to enter the Forest accompanied by a 5½ foot (1.6 metre) red balloon. She continued this over the cycle of a year, simultaneously shooting these attempts from two perspectives: one of the camera suspended in a harness under the balloon, the other sited on the ground.

Anxious Roots and Routes performance

Edwina fitzPatrick

Anxious Roots and Routes

Edwina fitzPatrick

The Lost Tour Guide performance

Edwina fitzPatrick

The Lost Tour Guide

Edwina fitzPatrick

Lost and Found Interactive Archive

Edwina fitzPatrick

Lost and Found Interactive Archive

Edwina fitzPatrick

Missing Persons' Files

Edwina fitzPatrick

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CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2013

25 May - 1 September 2013

Having received wide acclaim at the Royal Geographical Society in London, the Environmental Photographer of the Year 2013 Exhibition tours for the first time to Grizedale Forest in the heart of Cumbria’s Lake District.

The annual competition has become an international showcase for the very best in environmental photography and video, honouring amateurs and professionals of all ages. Since its inception in 2007, the awards, organised by the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM), has used the power of stunning imagery to highlight the plight of the land and people to global audiences.

The exhibition features over 100 astonishing images by international photographers who narrate a poignant story about the fragility of our planet, the pressures on land and resources and the people who are pushed ever closer to the margins by the persistent drive of globalization. Compiled from the very best of 3,000 plus entries, the exhibition of shortlisted images and films provide an opportunity for photographers to share images of environmental and social issues with international audiences, and to enhance our understanding of the causes, consequences and solutions to climate change and social inequality.

Michele Palazzi

Gone with the Dust #1, 2012

Aletheia Casey

 The disappearance of Lake Urmia, Photograph 9, 2011

Jan Kostal

Flood, 2008

Jonathan Goldberg

Beekeeping Workshop, 2012

Khalid Rayhan Shawon

Risky Ride, 2012

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Art Roots

ART ROOTS

Art Roots Grizedale was a research and development programme for a major new commissioning programme at Grizedale Forest led by Forestry Commission England. This Research & Development programme was supported by Arts Council England to develop high quality and artistically innovative feasible future works, providing opportunities for leading and emerging artists to deliver excellence in public art in a forest environment. Delivery of these works will re-establish Grizedale Forest as a centre of international excellence for art and sculpture in the environment.

Arts Roots Exhibition

2 June - 2 September 2012

The resulting exhibition Art Roots presented the work of the 9 established and emerging artists who were commissioned to produce proposals for works responding to the unique environment of Grizedale Forest for the first time. 

The 9 exhibiting artist are Jill Cole, Laura Ford, Tania Kovats, Jo Lathwood, Jessica Lloyd-Jones, Charlotte McGowan-Griffin, Andrew Ranville, Andrew Sabin and Keith Wilson.  All artists in the exhibition consider the landscape, our relationship to it and interaction with it as fundamental components of their research and making. Their proposed commissions respond to many aspects of the profound heritage of Grizedale Forest.

Find out more about all the artists working with us on Future Commissions.

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TERRA

11 February – 29 April 2012

Jerwood Visual Arts presents TERRA, the forthcoming Jerwood Encounters exhibition exploring the relationship contemporary sculpture practice shares with the environment and landscape beyond the gallery itself. The exhibition is curated by Hayley Skipper and Antony Mottershead of Forestry Commission England based at Grizedale Forest, and features work by Jonathan Anderson, Edwina fitzPatrick, Luke Jerram, Anne-Mie Melis and Owl Project. The artists each explore contemporary sculpture practice through their own sensory relationship with the environment and the artwork exposes these ideas through a multiplicity of unique works.

Physical form, materials and conceptual intent are often the primary languages used to interpret contemporary sculpture, however as a discipline sculpture also has an intimate relationship with our wider sensory experience. The strategies and processes employed by each of the artists translate information from one form of sensory experience into another. The range of practices included within the curatorial selection are an expansive definition of sculptural practice covering performative and installation based work that engages all of the senses including sound and smell.

Jonathan Anderson works with coal dust and other elemental substances. His work expresses the cyclical nature of things and provides an ideal vehicle for the exploration of poetic metaphor and transformation. It talks about shutting off, making still, stepping out of sequential time and ultimately death. Anderson has exhibited his work widely across Wales and in April 2010 he was the recipient of the Richard and Rosemary Wakelin Purchase Prize at The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea.

Edwina fitzPatrick explores living environments that involve mutability and change and reflects upon how climate change may affect this delicate balance. Her work also celebrates narratives and conversations, which are often deeply informed by the history of place. Fitzpatrick often collaborates with experts across a range of disciplines including horticulturalists, biodiversity experts, architects, perfumers, foresters, and composers. Fitzpatrick is currently completing a Ph.D. with Glasgow School of Art in collaboration with Grizedale Forest and developing practice based research in relation to the development of the environmental art archive at Grizedale.

Luke Jerram creates sculptures, installations, live art projects and gifts fusing his artistic sculptural practice with his scientific and perceptual studies. Jerram’s ongoing research of perception is fueled by the fact that he is colour-blind. He studies the qualities of space and perception in extreme locations, from the freezing forests of Lapland to the sand dunes of the Sahara desert allowing new ways of seeing. A multidisciplinary artist, Jerram develops extraordinary public projects and is currently working on a number of complex and ambitious new works. His celebrated street pianos installation Play Me I'm Yours is currently being shown in many different cities around the world.

Anne-Mie Melis’ work explores the visual nature of plants and their role in an increasingly technological world. Combining sculpture, animation and drawing in innovative installations to ignite our senses and expose her questioning of the environment, the engineering of nature and our changing climate. The collaborative nature of Melis’s practice brings together art and science, the twin engines of cultural evolution. She recently completed a Leverhulme Trust supported Residency at the School of Bioscience, Cardiff University.

Owl Project consists of Simon Blackmore, Antony Hall and Steve Symons. Working collaboratively they create musicmaking instruments and machines that combine electronics and software with traditional techniques such as green woodworking and wooden water wheels. In 2009 they won Urbis' Best of Manchester Award and their proposal for a floating waterwheel driven musical instrument was selected for Arts Council England's Artists Taking the Lead North East commission, one of 12 commissions for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

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"Like Nimrod's Tower the Tree Stretches Skyward"

Keir Smith an archival exhibition

9 April - 31 August 2011

This exhibition is the first to draw on a collection of archival material held by the Forestry Commission at Grizedale, and explores the incidental encounters Keir Smith experienced during the time he spent in the forest during two residencies and the influence this special place had on his later practice. In a text reflecting on the forest, he wrote: “So you see in this place no man really dies. Death is merely a translation into a different kind of growth.”

The exhibition will include Running from Eden, a sister work to Last Rays of and English Rose originally developed in 1986/87 and installed at Grizedale on the Silurian Way in 2009. A further 18 never before exhibited wall-mounted pieces, including watercolours in homage to Paul Nash, rust iron filing drawings; a technique developed by Keir, as well design lead ink drawings, made as project drawings to the development of later sculptures will be on show.

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