The Wash: Remember Nature

The Wash: Remember Nature is a tribute to the extraordinary coastal region of the Wash in Eastern England. It is the culmination of the GroundWork Residency for 2026, shown in this exhibition at GroundWork Gallery in King's Lynn and in seven further exhibitions across Norfolk and Lincolnshire.

The title is a small dedication to Gustav Metzger, the artist and environmental activist who once lived in King's Lynn. On 4 November 2015 Metzger initiated the Remember Nature project, inviting all artists to address the crisis within nature and to bring awareness to the damage that continues to devastate the natural world. It has become an annual event, and these Wash projects likewise draw attention to the threats facing the natural world as well as to its special qualities.

The brief to the residency artists was to consider the culture and environments of the Wash Estuary. Twenty-seven artists began the season together, with intense scrutiny of the region through talks, discussions and field trips, before each was left to develop an individual response. While they found a number of shared interests, every artist arrived at a completely different idea, each true to their own practice.

At GroundWork Gallery the exhibition asks how different ecosystems can co-exist in the Wash to preserve its natural diversity and engineer its survival. Karen Frances Eng presents A Theory of Distributed Kevinness, an installation centred on a wooden doll's house, prompted by a juvenile gull she befriended in a King's Lynn car park. Steven Follen draws on the medieval pilgrim badges worn on the way to Walsingham to make new designs for contemporary journeys. Jane Prophet explores mud as a non-Newtonian fluid, alongside sound, vision and an installation of seaweeds plotting her walks. Mary Naylor paints the rare Fen violets in memory of the early 19th-century female botanist who discovered them. Sara Heywood experiments with pinhole photography and vegetal developers to represent interpenetrating salt and fresh waters, and Sarah Rooms Heaphy makes precariously balanced, fragile ceramics from her study of biogenic reef habitats.

Carol Wilhide Justin shows woodcuts made with local pigments and a Japanese scroll recalling long days at Holme beach. Liz Kelleher layers Wash earths, stones and wastes into paintings and sculpture. Jacqui Jones maps the fragile, changing landscapes of the Wash through drought, flood and fire, and Louise Frances Smith makes salt-marsh mud installations touching on glacial melt, over-fishing and farming. Andrew Olley and Ellen Sampson juxtapose field recordings of waterways with drainage and engineering networks, while Nicholas Simpson and the duo Luke Walker and Rita Rosa Monteiro contribute film.

The programme includes performances and readings by Adrian Tissier, Harriet Tarlo and Petri Huurinainen. Every artist from the residency is also represented by a small work in the gallery's large display case.

Exhibiting artists: Karen Frances Eng, Steven Follen, Sara Heywood, Jacqui Jones, Carol Wilhide Justin, Liz Kelleher, Mary Naylor, Andrew Olley and Ellen Sampson, Jane Prophet, Sarah Rooms Heaphy, Nicholas Simpson, Louise Frances Smith, Luke Walker and Rita Rosa Monteiro.