Artists Clare Hewitt and Olga Grotova share a sensibility for, and preoccupation with, the range of ways in which the natural world bears witness to human experience. Taking inspiration from the complexity of diverse ecosystems, their works explore the binding force of nature in connecting both human and non-human communities. Clare Hewitt will draw on her project Everything in the forest is the forest, which takes inspiration from the interconnectedness of the forest, and how we, as humans, might learn from the networks of kinship and care found within the natural world around us.
Olga Grotova will expand on her work Red Forest, in which she works with cameraless photography to create fragmented and densely layered compositions. In her work, shadow-like traces of her and her mother’s bodies intersect with those of dried flowers, railway maps, stone pigments, and soil, all derived from locations directly connected to the stories of women from post-Soviet states that have been erased from established historical narratives.
They will be joined by writer Melissa McCarthy, whose work looks at the places where literature, images, and history swirl together. Her books include: Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro (2023), which considers flowers, photography, and explosions; Sharks, Death, Surfers: An Illustrated Companion (2019), which examines the precarious balance between who’s moving over the face of the water, and what’s lurking underneath; and Exceptional Subjects (2024), a collaboration with photographer Norman McBeath.
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Clare Hewitt’s Everything in the forest is the forest, and Olga Grotova’s Red Forest will be on view in Room 5 of Copeland Gallery from 16-25 May, as part of Peckham 24.
Image credit © Clare Hewitt from the series Everything in the forest is the forest