H E I N I K I N G
E C H O E S F R O M A F O R E S T
Open: 15 - 18 MAY 2025 12 - 4PM
PV 16 MAY 6 - 8PM
Both Gallery presents recent painting and performance from the Finnish-British artist Heini King. The exhibition starts from the old dichotomy of the artist’s absence from or participation in civic life. Whether Echoes from a Forest refer to longing for the past, for the future or longing for the present to engulf the creator, the body of work on display rests on that dichotomy.
Heini King's practice is influenced by shifting cultural positions, material experimentation, biophilia and interest in observation as much as in unconscious creativity. The works in the exhibition picture landscapes in movement and in transition. Both symbolist and romanticist depiction of landscape painting are referenced in the process of examining a subjective take on climate change. Implications of the changes are imagined through a Nordic lens. Themes of dependancy, kinship and subordinacy are positions that are examined in relation to landscape.
The environment’s own agency gets referenced through the recurring theme of the female body. Reminiscent of a folk tale the body of work creates an imagined space. Birthing of a new climate order is due, independent of humans. The artist’s visual anthropomorphism relies on romanticisation of the climate crisis in its attempt to awaken a sense of awe. The imagery displays environment as both pantheistic and as a deity out of the reach of human logic. Environmentally destructive human activity plays a minor part in the picturing of reordering waters, land and sky. Instead, humanity is granted a position of a doula in the process of rebirthing of the environment. A collective lullaby may not help Winter’s insomnia but it can ease the doula’s own anxiety and prepare them in receiving what is being delivered.
