SEE HERE NOW : EXHIBITION

Featured image: Jools Gilson, in Mary Wycherley’s ‘Weathering’ (2023). Image by Marcin Lewandowski.

In SEE HERE NOW, PLACE Collective artists address the theme ‘Art in a Time of Urgency’. How are artists responding to local and global climate and nature crises? What does their work bring into focus, which absences does it highlight, whose voices are brought in? These and other questions are addressed through artwork in a range of media, offering both beauty and concern, attitudes of slowness as well as urgency. Some artists bring new work to the show, others exhibit work that has emerged from recent projects.

The show in the galleries of Grizedale Forest will include video, audio, 2D imagery, poetry, photography and sculptural work. Between all the pieces, there is a golden thread of attention to relationships within the natural world, and where art may invite or stimulate closer noticing and a deepening of connections, and become part of a process of restoring balance where this has been lost.

APRIL 5, 2025: PREVIEW AND Meet the Artists

If you’d like to come along on April 5th to meet some of the exhibiting artists, and/or attend the evening preview, please join us.

4pm-5pm: Artists in conversation with Hazel Stone, National Curator of Contemporary Art, Forestry England.

5pm-7pm: Preview evening, with nibbles.

RSVP: Email rob.fraser@cumbria.ac.uk.

Exhibiting Artists

The following artists will be exhibiting work. You can find out more them through the ARTISTS page, and there will be a series of blogs highlighting individual artists, as they discuss the work they’re bringing to the show. As the blogs appear, we’ll create links to them from the list below.

Grizedale Forest

Exhibiting in Grizedale Forest is to build on a legacy of thoughtful and often boundary-pushing art: art that provokes and inspires, and often incorporates humans, other species, and the land itself.

Forestry England’s Grizedale Forest has, since the 1970s, hosted pioneering artists, some of whom have spent months in the forest and/or revisited multiple times across the years. It has sculptural work located across its 4000-hectare estate and is the site for exhibitions and engagement programmes, as well as working craft studios. Grizedale Forest is one of the family of Forestry England forests hosting public art (see more here).

PLACE Collective artists follow in a long tradition of art practice to invite reflections, conversations and deeper enquiry into the interconnections of the living world. In 2025, this involves consideration of the urgency for action to restore and reconnect natural habitats and redress imbalances across social, economic, political and environmental contexts. Artists take various approaches, including social practice, sculpture, photography, film, written and spoken word, movement, music, textiles and more … it’s a broad picture.

The galleries are in the Visitor Centre of Grizedale Forest, LA22 0QJ (directions here).

Blog posts featuring the work of individual artists will be shared from February 2025

A black pen outline drawing of a daffodil, over brown marks on paper
A woman with dark curly hair and a red dress stands in front of a a large screen or projected image facing to the left of the frame.
At the top of the image there is half a block print of a mango in orange. Beneath that there is Urdu text followed by the English translation.
An illustration in brown paint showing a sea creature
A man stands on a hill drawing at a metal table. On the table is a tall rock, he is drawing around its shadow. In the distance there are other hills, and in the mid ground there are lots of trees.

While the exhibition is in Grizedale Forest Galleries, PLACE Collective artists will be gathering for a weekend of sharing, eating, discussing, exploring – and will be making plans for an online symposium to frame a wider conversation about art, artists and others, finding inspiration, collaborating, and taking action in a time of urgency. The See Here Now project will be ongoing.