The vital communication between trees and humans is the inspiration behind Clare Hewitt’s new exhibition, Everything In The Forest Is The Forest, which shows at Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) until the end of August. The collection showcases sustainable artistic practices, offers a new perspective on a familiar forest setting, and feeds into a programme of hands-on workshops at MAC throughout the summer. What’s On sat down with Clare to hear more about her arboreal muse and the unique processes which she used to compile the works on display…

A photography exhibition with a difference - entitled Everything In The Forest Is The Forest - is now open in Midlands Arts Centre (MAC). The multifaceted snapshot of forest life was created by Clare Hewitt, in collaboration with the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research - and its trees - and now visits Birmingham, Clare’s home town.

The works include Oak leaf lumen prints, created on the forest floor, scientific-looking formations extracted from soil samples, and a book created with Oak gall ink - made to an historical recipe. 

Clare first established her outdoor artist’s studio in 2019, within a circle of 12 oak trees at the Institute, where she also set up bird box-like cameras containing film, which was slowly exposed to light.

“I had planned to go and change those every month,” Clare told What’s On, “and then the pandemic happened, so I couldn't go - so actually they've been really lovely accidents. Some of them are six months, some of them are four-year exposures. 

“It's been about regularly visiting the forest, spending time with it, spending time with the trees, learning with them, and trying to understand how they communicate, collaborate, and exchange knowledge - and getting to know those specific trees for such a chunk of time, which is a fraction of their life.”

The trees themselves are around 180 years old - meaning that they would have been acorns when photography was first invented. Throughout the project, Clare has adapted her photography practice to become more sustainable.

“This was about becoming more familiar with a natural environment. What processes could I do there that weren't detrimental to [the forest]? I'd never done a lot of the processes that you see in the exhibition before.”

In more ways than one, the exhibition brings the essence of the forest indoors…

“You're gonna be hearing a lot of birds! Myself and Annie Mahtani, a professor at the University of Birmingham, went to the forest very early one morning - it was about 5am - and the night before, we'd set up a 360-degree sound recording… We sat on the floor and listened to the dawn chorus - it's completely immersive. Because we've recorded it around the 12 trees, what you hear over there, you hear differently over there - we could hear a pheasant having a conversation with an owl!” 

In the process of assembling her work, Clare has been actively reaching out to other creators - including artists who could expand and enhance her practice, and local people living near her forest studio.

“I worked with 14 people who live around the forests, to teach them those processes as well. The project really started due to a government report that suggested that people who lived in rural areas were becoming lonelier or more isolated.” 

While she was seeking out human connections, Clare also learned more about how the trees themselves communicate, offering her a unique angle on the project.

“I think what it's meant is - other brains coming in that have different perspectives to mine. That hasn't just meant human brains, but also the way that the forest thinks and works and speaks. Recognising that just because the trees don't communicate in the same way that we do doesn't mean that they don't.

Once you start collaborating, it's hard to stop, because it just rolls on and on and on, and I think that's the way that the forest works. It has these networks that expand outwards.”

A central principle of the project was to create the works with sustainability in mind. 

“We worked with The Wood Shack, who are based in Sutton Coldfield. They rescue waste wood from around the city, turn it into other things, and sell it on - but they also have an apprenticeship scheme. I ran a workshop with an artist called Jamie Murray, and we made the frames out of their reclaimed scaffolding boards. I've worked with artists here in Birmingham: Danielle Phelps, Carolyn Morton, and book designers at Stanley James Press - we made a book out of mushrooms, which is also in the exhibition.

“Everything is reused, repurposed; thinking about what materials we can reuse, even in a gallery setting. When you see the frames, they don't feel like they're reclaimed scaffolding boards.”

The exhibition - which is even painted with reclaimed and remixed paint - is situated in MAC’s Arena Gallery on the ground floor, in easy reach of the surrounding park. It’s a familiar setting for Clare, who lives nearby.

“My daughter comes here all the time. We do various activities here, intergenerationally, and I think it's just such a privilege to be showing it here, with my community as well.” 

With fellow artist and contributor Emily Macaulay, Clare will be hosting a two-day workshop, in which participants will collect natural specimens from MAC’s neighbouring Cannon Hill Park, to be used for Lumen printing and made into a book to take home.

“Emily is a brilliant book designer. We’ll teach people how to make lumen prints - then we'll be working out how to make them into books, how to edit them, sequence them, and bind them into books. When we made the books, we tried to do it in a very sustainable way. We didn't use any kind of glue to bind. It was all done by hand. So people will be learning how to make the prints, and then collectively editing them and binding them over the weekend into a book.”

The importance for people to connect closely with nature is explored in the exhibition, and this theme is also the subject of a symposium held at MAC on Friday 19 June.

“I think it's so important at the moment that we're treating our planet with more respect. We're running a symposium based on ecology and care and photography, and there’ll be speakers from all different disciplines throughout the day - we'll be bringing lots of different ideas together around nature and wellbeing.”

Looking forward, Clare intends to further explore the Oak trees with which she’s become so familiar: “I'm thinking at the moment about the acorn as a kind of symbol of the archive - this little piece of knowledge that gets passed through generations; this wisdom that's held. The archive does the same thing. I've actually just been selected for the Pete James collection prize, with a curator called Rodrigo Arantia, and we're looking at how women have interacted with nature in times of crisis, through Pete James' archive [at Birmingham City University]. So that's really exciting; that feels like the next starting point for a project.”

In the meantime, visitors can now head to MAC to explore a small specimen of British forest - as it has never been seen before.

Clare Hewitt: Everything In The Forest Is The Forest shows at Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), Birmingham, until Monday 31 August