Throughout history, nature has been a source of inspiration for artists, offering a space for reflection, comfort, and awe. In today’s landscape of rising global temperatures and an increasingly destabilized climate, considerations about our connection to and responsibility for nature are more pertinent than ever.

For this exhibition, Girl Museum showcases artists exploring their relationship with the natural world, responding to their environments as a source of solace and escape, or ruminating on our changing landscape and humanity’s role within this. 

Human experience is intrinsically linked to the natural world, though it’s a connection that has grown increasingly muddied as the world moves ever deeper into a technological age. In Girls’ Visions of Nature, these artists demonstrate the liberating power a wild and unrestrained landscape can have on the human spirit, particularly those constrained by societal and gender norms.

As artist Sophie Austin writes, “This is not a fiction, but a glimpse of real life in which girls are unshackled and free to draw upon their wilder nature.”

-Scarlett Evans
Contemporary Art Manager

“I began to see pieces of wood that reminded me of the human body. At the same time, I began to disassemble items that had accumulated throughout my life, creating assemblages that became physical diary entries of my memories and emotions.”

“Horses were an obsession throughout my childhood, collecting figures, drawings, anything that allowed me to be part of their herd. Within my work I now create worlds where horses are the protagonists, mythical creatures, symbols of elemental forces such as the sun and moon. I feel that the horses are aspects of my own psyche, seeking solace in the natural world.”

“The horses in this painting are a mother horse and foal, out in a moonlit forest. This painting was created in response to seeing the relationships between horses and their foals in the New Forest. I was interested in the experience of female horses in the landscape, and the parallel between this and my own experiences in nature. There is a sense of intimacy that mares have with their foals which feels very similar to the way that I feel within the environment and a young woman, held by all the living beings around me.”

“Nature is the source of my imagery and my artistic practices. It’s often the only place where I am free from the burdens of life to let myself create and play. These images are shot through glass containers so the visible degradation over time is visible to the viewer which reminds me of what many women go through with a lens on them all of them through their growth and through their (natural) deterioration.”

“A time outside time, magic is everywhere and anything is possible…Bearing witness to this turning point, the inhabitants gather for a wassail – a centuries old thanksgiving ritual in which folk gather to honour the slow return of the sun and bless the apple trees whose fruit are essential to the village ecosystem, not least the crumbles, juice and cider that sustains them throughout the year.”

“Our main protagonists are the girls in the village who acknowledge and play with the camera throughout the preparations and ritual. We see these girls owning their wildness and watch as they easily shift between the human and wilder realms.”

“In my film, I wanted to celebrate the raw magic that wild ritual can offer girls in particular. This is not a fiction, but a glimpse of real life in which girls are unshackled and free to draw upon their wilder nature.” 

“Nature becomes a metaphor for the feminine essence: how she is able to change over time, survive despite trials, and at the same time maintain her beauty and uniqueness.”

“Changeability, resilience and inspiration, this is the inextricable connection between women and nature. In this work, I strive to convey the harmony that arises at the intersection of feminine essence and nature, recalling its fragility and strength. This is an invitation to think about our role in the world and about respect for what surrounds us, because in every woman, as in nature, the power of creation and rebirth is hidden.”

“Waiting depicts a female migrant stranded on one side of a stretch of water, wanting to reach the other side for safety. There’s a mother/goddess figure on the opposite bank, inspired by the pond setting at Charleston. At this pond, there is a statue by Woolf’s nephew and biographer, Quentin Bell, called Levitating Woman which seems to hover/float above the water.”

“Mother of Shattered Glass was inspired by a painting by Vanessa Bell (the older sister of Virginia Woolf). I wanted to show the fragility of motherhood, of trying to keep everything together – work, family, oneself – in a world that also feels like it’s splintering.”

“Even though humans’ creation of patriarchy and nature’s creation of monthly pain cause a girl to constantly question ‘What am I living for?’, no narrative needs to be addressed for her existence.”

“A girl’s existence and her reproductive ability is created by Nature. Unquestionable and unexplainable.”

“My Rusałka (a self-portrait) sits in the company of many local flora commonly seen as ‘bad’ or ‘dangerous’. She is befriended by an alligator decorated in a floral wreath, a cottonmouth snake cuddles up to her, and barracudas swim playfully around her.”

“Slavic paganism is big on animism, and spiritual essence in all living things. It sees these spirits as neither good nor bad, but somewhere in between, helping those who are kind and punishing those who are cruel. I find this a wonderful antidote to the binary ‘Madonna/Whore’ complex often inflicted upon women. Old religions tend towards a more egalitarian point of view with genders, unlike the more patriarchal contemporary ones.”