At the end of 2016 I made a work for the Barn in Banchory where I am resident and where the ‘soil laboratory’ is taking place. This is one of many ‘Dear Nature’ letters I have been writing over the last couple of years and continue to write. Each character of the letter is written into a soil bowl. The soils bowls were installed for a couple days as a wall based work. Then there were taken into a large scots pine forest and left as a permanent work. It is always exciting to think of people on occasion happening across this thought in the forest.
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John Newling, Birches and Berries, 2016. All images copyright © 2017 John Newling
Birches and Berries
In the autumn 2016 my work, Birches and Berries, came to end. This long and intense work sought to grow berries of all sorts between silver birch trees in a large hydroponic tent. It was good to visit the installation once a week and to be part of its maintenance as the trees and berry bushes grew. As with many of my works I was never sure if I would be able to harvest fruits from the installation. As it turned out I was, and it was exciting to be harvesting inside a gallery.
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Syson Gallery Last Islands Exhibition; 25 March–21 May, 2016
Wayne Burrows interview with John Newling on the the ‘Last Islands’ and ‘Human Nature Table’ works. (Full version).
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Live reading of 'The Lemon Tree and Me' by Danial Hyatt, New York
Danial read the entire book. This was a Transart Institute initiative taking place at the Powerhouse Arena bookstore in Dumbo, Brooklyn.
The Generosity Plates; Event at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara
This event was part of my contribution to their ‘Magic Mountain’ exhibition that ran for 1 year.
Recent Aquisition
After a recent successful show at Woodend Barn, Banchory, Aberdeenshire, we're please to announce that the following three works have been acquired for their collection.
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Last Islands Banchory - Essay
Located on the outskirts of Banchory in Aberdeenshire, Woodend Barn is an exceptional venture that looks properly at what art can be within a community. I was delighted to be invited to be an artist in residence there in 2014.
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The Map Room of the Last Islands - 22 August – 23 September 2015
This major exhibition of previously unseen work is a powerful, and visually beautiful, illustration of the ways in which artist John Newling explores the relationships between the natural world and systems of value within society.
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The York Texts – 21st Century Eden, July
Newling’s residency is entitled ‘21st Century Eden’, and from a market stall in the square – the artist’s temporary studio for the month.
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As Exciting As We Can Make It: Ikon in the 1980s Ikon Gallery, 2 July—31 August 2014
‘Exits’ emerged from a conceptual cartography that responded to the drone of the years events seeping into our home.
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The Generosity Plates – Wellcome Collection, 15 May–10 August
Ecologies of Value was an exhibition of work that included growing Moringa Oleifera trees hydroponically in galleries in Nottingham and Penzance during 2013. These bracelets have evolved from that work.
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Generosity Plates - Limited Edition
Alongside the current Wellcome Collection show, a single plate is available in an edition of 36, with a bespoke box and essay booklet In the Arboretum of Values, The Moringa Plates by Jonathan Willet. £150.00
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One Foot in the Real World 12th October 2013 – Spring 2014
On return from Banchory I learnt that my work A Turning Mutability was being installed at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
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Ecologies of Value (Talk), Gray's School and Woodend Barn – Early October 2013
In early October I travelled to Aberdeen to do a talk on ‘Ecologies of Value’ at the excellent Grays School and visited Helen smith’s PHD project on the local history and much more of the lavender industry in Banchory.
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Ecologies of Value, 20th July – 14th September 2013
The exhibition moved on from Nottingham Contemporary to the Newlyn/Exchange gallery in Penzance.
The Exchange Gallery is a relatively new space. I worked with the team at the gallery, led by the curator Blair Todd, and spent a week installing this version of ‘Ecologies of Value’.
Spinning – Nature, culture and the spiritual in the work of John Newling
Spinning – Nature, culture and the spiritual in the work of John Newling By Richard Davey
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Market of Hidden Labours (May 2013)
The stalls will be installed in the grounds outside of the newly refurbished West Office building of York City Council. The market is free to all. The hope is that the Market of ideas becomes an annual event for the city creating a contemporary legacy that fuses a relationship between people in York and the ever expanding creative community that the city hosts; it is a market that brings new values to the traditional transactions.
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Stall of Gathered Economies (No 1) – May 2013
"I have always enjoyed market places; they seem to belie the hard profit drenched transactions of the shop or bank, leaking instead, a sense of an older aspect of consumption and need. These are times when common values are looking in directions away from the haste and greed of our late twentieth century selves towards a state where value is no longer sliding exclusively towards capital and moving more towards wellbeing and the new necessity for better understanding our environment; a kind of emerging ecology of values."
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Ecologies of Value, 2012
John Newling is a pioneer of public art with a social purpose. His works explore the natural world and the social and economic systems of society – such as money or religion. He belongs to a generation of artists whose work evolved from Conceptual Art, Land Art and Arte Povera – art movements occurring during the 1960s, that placed emphasis on the concept, process and site of the work, alongside material and aesthetic properties. This is Newling’s first major survey exhibition and presents a selection of his work from the 1970s to the present day.
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Out of this World. (Group exhibition)
Out of this World. (Group exhibition) Inaugural exhibition at the SYSON Gallery, 2013 Selected by Jennie Syson; curator and gallery director
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