PERIENNE CHRISTIAN

In this exhibition Everyday Weeds, Perienne will be showing recent work made at or near to her studio in Bawdsey and the results of her residency at the Lookout. This work investigates landscape and place through the lens of everyday weeds. Weeds are at best overlooked and at worst totally annihilated in our culture. But if we look to our not-too-distant past, many of these same weeds were prized for their food and medicinal properties. They hold our history and folklore in their very fabric.

Perienne spends time walking, drawing and collecting these plants, which she then eats, ferments or makes medicines from, building anunderstanding of them that then goes into her artwork. She is intrigued by the 'old ways' of medicine women and midwives (women who were often obliterated during the witch hunts in the 1600's) and how the resurgence of these old ways can act as a reconnection to a more respectful relationship to the natural world.

Included in the exhibition are drawings charting her walks, with investigations into the local wild plants and their folklore; a series of objects and medicines crafted with the materials she has collected and a handmade artist book with text and image, weaving both story and imagery together.

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'Perienne has a passion for the ins and outs of storytelling. She concocts scenes, complete in themselves, that demand the attention, the perusal, that all good poetry requires.' 

William Feaver, painter, writer and former art critic for the Observer