Artist-Led Walk with Sheila Ghelani

Join artist Sheila Ghelani for a guided walk that explores themes of ecology, science and history.

Hold a black mirror carefully in the palm of your hand and look, listen and think about who you are in relation to the natural world around you on this participatory wander. What do you see and what remains just off to the side – hidden, overlooked, forgotten, unnoticed?

Popular in the 1800s with landscape painters and tourists, black mirrors were used to ‘tint’ views - a bit like the Instagram filters we use today. During this activity, you'll learn more about black mirrors and their use through time and will be given the chance to sketch like a landscape painter, write like a poet and look like a tourist - amongst other things.

Make a day of it

After the walk, at 1:30pm, we'll be hosting a screening of 'The Last Ice Age' as part of the Shifting Landscapes Film Series in partnership with Emergence Magazine. Retracing his grandparents’ annual journey to Iceland’s Vatnajökull glacier to witness the loss of Europe’s largest ice cap with his son, Andri Snær Magnason searches for the stories that can help us understand our ecological crisis.

We also have two exhibitions to visit on-site, which will be open from 10am-3pm. In our gallery space, we are hosting Flat Earth by Phil Root. Phil Root uses ceramic processes to explore the limits of traditional craft pottery. He works with foraged and industrial materials such as waste clay from his local brick factory to present stories about land and our place in it. In our project space, we are hosting The Sick Rose by Jamie Seymour, a garden-like exhibition inspired by William Blake, where flowers, swans and watching eyes hold queer anxiety.