Landscapes of Progress?

What is progress? How do we relate to landscape?

This exhibition, showing from the 11th November 2023 to the 3rd March 2024, brings together six artists: Rebecca Chesney, Simon Hitchens, Marie-Louise Jones, Hugo Lami, Madinah Farhannah Thompson and Mirte van Duppen; all of whom make work inspired by these questions.

Whether attempting to understand and present individual views of the world around us, exploring history, change or using innovation and environmental ways to create art.

Five of the artists know Hestercombe, its buildings, collections and gardens, well. Four have previously been resident artists, absorbing themselves in the day-to-day routines of flora, fauna and human co-existence during the past three years, with the fifth returning to work made on-site eight years ago. The sixth artist presents an alternative hi-tech view of land usage from across the sea in The Netherlands.

All six artists make works in and of the landscape using various techniques and devices. Being struck by how many large ash trees are found at Hestercombe led Rebecca Chesney to respond directly to the devastating ash dieback disease present here and across the UK through direct and indirect drawing. Simon Hitchens takes a simple piece of Hestercombe stone and uses the stone’s shadow to create intricate durational day drawings, which, in turn, quite literally make three-dimensional sculptures, from the fourth dimension.

Both Hugo Lami and Marie-Louise Jones’s journeys into the unknown landscapes of Hestercombe led them to working with emerging technologies; whether 3D eco-printing sculptural objects or focusing on how the experience of the natural world is changing with our cultural and technological evolution. Mirte van Duppen and Madinah Farhannah Thompson both present film works from very different starting points. Van Duppen presents an element of AgriValley, a long-term poetic study of Dutch agriculture, influenced by the enormous impact of technological innovation in that country. In her new film ‘Call When You Reach’, Thompson, who continues her research at Hestercombe, explores landscape and racial trauma, referencing both the past and its present burden on black bodies

Dates & Tickets

Landscapes of Progress? is showing at Hestercombe Gallery from 11th November 2023 until 3rd March 2024.

Entry is by gardens admission only.

Hestercombe Gallery is open daily from 11am - 4pm.

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