WAX Atelier

Written By Vickie Hayward

WAX Atelier
The Abney Effect
Exhibition, 2024

Exhibition curation for WAX Atelier, ‘The Abney Effect’ was located in one of London's 'Magnificent Seven' garden cemeteries. This exhibition showcased the work of artists and designers who are highlighting the transformative potential of sustainable tree-derived materials, harvested from living trees or collected as part of good forest management.

Co-curated with WAX Atelier, the presentation offered a new perspective on our shared green spaces and invites the audience to imagine a more collaborative relationship, where private and public land is cultivated as forest gardens and provides a local perennial source for materials for the artists and designers palette.

Said to be relatively resilient systems, forest gardens are better able than other forms of horticulture to cope with climate change, pests and diseases. This layered planting system can be rolled out at any scale and creates a biodiverse habitat by mimicking the design of tree based ecological systems. Gardening in this way creates a productive natural resource that is in balance. A 'no-till' approach to growing, using perennial plants, means the soil can be largely undisturbed and completely covered by crops or mulch; this not only allows mycorrhizal fungi networks to develop and distribute nutrients, but also stores carbon, prevents against soil erosion, nutrient degradation and ultimately land desertification.

Trees are well known as a renewable resource, but they have huge potential beyond wood for felling or fruit for eating. The work presented is this space demonstrates a tiny fraction of what could be harvested from the whole tree: from root to leaf tip, and all its symbiotic inhabitants in between.

The exhibition was kindly supported by British Council, Hackney Council & The Abney Park Trust.

 
 

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