Rebecca Byrne, This Ancient Frequency, 2024, acrylic gesso, and pastel on paper, 20x30cm

"I often spend time looking at what may often be overlooked; in this case I was interested in the root structure of these trees and how they looked like tentacles searching for purchase in the ground. I've been reading about how trees are connected to each other underground via Mycelium which create a network for trees to communicate. The idea of a community under our feet is something I find comforting as I reflect on the future of the environment, and I also find the longevity of trees fascinating. I imagine all the people who have come and gone and, through it all, the forest has endured."

Rebecca Byrne is an American artist with a practice based in drawing and painting living and working in London; she works on canvas and aluminum, as well as 9m long paper which she uses to create immersive site-responsive installations that can be rolled up and reinterpreted in another location.

Byrne's uncanny and fantastical landscapes reflect how she mediates the world. Rooted in fragments of memory, reality and fantasy, she explores our relationship to the environment by referencing images of extinct and existing plant life that never actually co-existed, creating pictures of nature in flux with searing colour. Throughout her practice there is an obscured personal narrative; Byrne's recent work draws from her background growing up in urban Chicago and spending weekends with her parents as they attempted to establish a small organic farm well before most people were considering our relationship to the land. Researching the systems and structures of plants, she uses real and imagined subject matter to propose an alternate natural world.

Rebecca Byrne, This Ancient Frequency, 2024, acrylic gesso, and pastel on paper, 20x30cm

"I often spend time looking at what may often be overlooked; in this case I was interested in the root structure of these trees and how they looked like tentacles searching for purchase in the ground. I've been reading about how trees are connected to each other underground via Mycelium which create a network for trees to communicate. The idea of a community under our feet is something I find comforting as I reflect on the future of the environment, and I also find the longevity of trees fascinating. I imagine all the people who have come and gone and, through it all, the forest has endured."

Rebecca Byrne is an American artist with a practice based in drawing and painting living and working in London; she works on canvas and aluminum, as well as 9m long paper which she uses to create immersive site-responsive installations that can be rolled up and reinterpreted in another location.

Byrne's uncanny and fantastical landscapes reflect how she mediates the world. Rooted in fragments of memory, reality and fantasy, she explores our relationship to the environment by referencing images of extinct and existing plant life that never actually co-existed, creating pictures of nature in flux with searing colour. Throughout her practice there is an obscured personal narrative; Byrne's recent work draws from her background growing up in urban Chicago and spending weekends with her parents as they attempted to establish a small organic farm well before most people were considering our relationship to the land. Researching the systems and structures of plants, she uses real and imagined subject matter to propose an alternate natural world.