The William Morris Gallery will present Gayle Chong Kwan’s The People’s Forest, an exhibition of new photographic and sculptural work, which explores the history, politics, and people of London’s ancient woodland, Epping Forest.

The exhibition is the culmination of the Leytonstone artist’s two-year engagement and research investigating the forest as a threshold between rural and urban, and as a site of historic and recent protest, as a shared and contested resource, and conflict between capital and common.

“I started discovering the forest and fell in love,” Gayle explains. “I began making all these connections, like with William Morris, and doing more research which turned into this large scale two-year project with the Barbican.

“I’ve also worked with the arborists and they’ve been taking me on their working days and what ended up happening is I’ve started to learn the visual language and started to see the forest management.”

East London and West Essex Guardian Series:

(Photo by Parisa Taghizadeh)

The People’s Forest includes a series of large-scale photographic ‘forest portraits’ of people who have a special relationship with the forest, taken at sites that have a personal resonance for them.

“There portraits are with nine people and it’s the first time I’ve ever done portraiture, and I’ve included myself.

“The people have a special relationship with a forest and I’ve spent time with them in that taking photographs, then made headdresses out of the images and then re-photographed them back in that site.

“One is an award winning aerialist who trains in the forest, another is a novelist who has an allotment at the edge of the forest and there’s the arborists as well.”

The headdresses are presented as three-dimensional sculptural works in the show. The works are informed by William Morris’ passion for the medieval epics, which he enacted during childhood play in Epping Forest, and the artist’s interest in the visual management and artifice of the forest landscape.

Gayle’s other new series for The People’s Forest is colour photographs of ‘intimate trees’ in Epping Forest; twisted, entwined sensual forms that have slowly grown to lean on and embrace each other, alluding to the liminal and illicit nature of the primeval woods.

Other works include a series of collages, hand-tinted with colour dyes created out of ingredients from the forest, which explore the broader contemporary issues around forest, politics and place.

“I still feel like I’ve only just touched the surface. I’ve spent two years linking historic parts such as the recent protests in the 1990s around building the M11 which is next to where I live.

“Art and artists have always been involved in politics and protests around the forest. The area was condemned because of it but now my road is full of artists.”

The People’s Forest follows and complements the presentation of Gayle’s monolithic 11-metre high sculptural installation The Fairlop Oak, which is currently in the Barbican foyer until March 18. The Fairlop Oak is a tree that once stood in nearby Hainault Forest and which was the site of a popular eighteenth-century fair.

Gayle’s research with the diverse communities has spanned walks, workshops, events, sensory feasts, and talks exploring the arboreal history, politics, and memories of Epping Forest, and the global issues facing other forests. Parts of the exhibition at William Morris Gallery will be presented at The View exhibition centre in Epping Forest at a later date.

William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow, E17 4PP, March 3 until May 20 2018. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm.