The London Group is delighted to present Landscapes, a free outdoor sculpture exhibition in St John’s Churchyard Gardens in partnership with St John’s Waterloo and the Waterloo Festival.
The festival theme, “Gardens, Rivers and Marshes“, celebrates the early life of Waterloo and North Lambeth. Unlike Vauxhall to the South and Blackfriars to the East, this area took until the 19th century to develop into a dense neighbourhood. Prior to that, it was host to fields, marshes, and wharfs. It was also well known for its pleasure gardens, including Cuper’s Gardens and Astley’s Circus, the first modern circus. This theme not only delves into Waterloo’s pre 19th century past but also highlights its current role as a pivotal urban centre. It is a celebration of our green spaces and neighbourhood as well as a chance to reflect on our environmental challenges.
The London Group have distilled this into the theme ‘Landscapes’, which the exhibiting artists have interrogated from different perspectives and in different mediums. These include traditional, poetic, emotional and urban to name but a few. Barbara Beyer’s installation ‘Best intentions’ references young urban trees strapped between poles to support their early years growth. They need this support as they are taken out of their natural environment and the whole contraption reveals our ambiguous relation to landscape and environment. Marenka Gabeler explores the landscape of emotions with a series of small sculptures that are to hang from branches or be placed among the trunk and branches of a tree. The pieces are imprints of the negative shapes her hands make when feeling intense emotions.
