Art from the temperate rainforest
Named after Mary Oliver’s poem, Fiona Fouhy’s upcoming solo show reflects her experiences in a Scottish temperate rainforest on her field trip to Argyle last summer.
Each day was spent in Cormonachan Woodland, a small community-run pocket of rare temperate rainforest on Loch Goil. These original prints of trees, mosses, ferns and lichens are some of the resulting works from time spent enveloped by her surroundings, lying on the forest floor, experiencing the ‘touch ‘ of leaves and mosses on her skin, listening to the sounds and noticing the movements and constant changes of weather. Her aim is to distil these experiences into visual ‘poems’, drawing in the viewer to feel the sense of being present in an ancient woodland.
Fouhy prefers to work with black ink, gaining tonal variations by lifting layers of ink off the plate. She enjoys the physical process of engaging with the sticky inks, strongly relying on a sense of touch to produce each mark. Her monochrome palette alludes to memories or dreamlike states.
The work taps into the emotions, the sense of wonder and awe at the grand scale of the trees and the intimacy of tiny mosses, liverworts and lichens. Titles of her pieces refer to a layer of reality in the forest that is present but not visible. She connects with the indigenous cultural concept of ‘Deep Time’ where the past, present and future coexist, implying the presence of more than the eye can see.
There are also references to a time when plants, animals and humans slipped between one form and another, and Fouhy is keen to view all species as beings with equal status, moving away from the Western ways of seeing ‘nature’ as separate to humans or as a ‘commodity’ to be consumed by human beings. Instead she desires ‘to know the world as a neighbourhood of (human and) non-human residents’
Fouhy’s prints celebrate the unique strangeness of lichens and the abundance of epiphytes (plants that grow on plants) found in these wet and windy forests. Her hope is that in drawing attention to these special places, more of us will care enough to want to preserve them and encourage their expansion instead of depletion.
Temperate rainforests in the UK are an ancient biome, thousands of years old, that only exist in small pockets here. These forests are home to epiphytic ferns, rare lichens and mosses, found especially along the Atlantic coast. The Thousand Year Trust is a scientific research project set up to restore Britain’s rainforests both now and for future generations.
Eames Fine Art Gallery, 58 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UD. 12 – 29th June 2025.
Fiona will give a talk about the artwork on 21st June at 12pm. Register your interest here: re***********@**********rt.com
