
19/09/2019
Exhibition | Julian Perry: Where Grew the Tree | 11 October – 4 November 2019
There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
In Memoriam, Alfred Lord Tennyson
Austin Desmond Fine Art is delighted to present Julian Perry’s one person show Where Grew the Tree.
Disintegration, loss and the tragedy of Climate breakdown provide the context and inspiration for the artist’s haunting new paintings. The pernicious effects of rising sea levels and resulting coastal erosion on England’s Suffolk coast have provided the artist with powerful images. Perry has transformed found locations into paintings imbued with current anxieties about environmental catastrophe. Perry’s debt to the British landscape tradition compounds the poignancy of the works. The irony that it is Suffolk, county of Constable and Gainsborough that is dissolving into the sea, is not lost on the artist.
Since Perry’s last show at Austin Desmond in 2012 his work has attracted considerable international attention, including exhibiting at the 2015 Venice Biennale and featuring in papers published by the Paul Mellon Center for studies in British Art at Yale. A larger version of this exhibition will be held at Southampton City Art Gallery in June 2021
Image: Coastal Triptych 2019