Tribute to the mighty oak and its place in our ecology, landscape, history, social narratives, literature and culture

Artist Kurt Jackson considers the beloved tree’s place in our ecology, landscape, history, social narratives, literature and culture

Kurt Jackson: Oak

at The Base, Greenham

until Sunday, November 17

Review by LIN WILKINSON

Pictures by PHIL CANNINGS

KURT Jackson returns to The Base with Oak, a show that looks at our beloved national tree in all seasons and references its significance in our lives.

Jackson takes a representational rather than a conceptual approach, with great technical expertise.

Most works feature a single oak as the dominating motif, with no human presence.

The body of work is concerned with the oak’s place in our ecology, landscape, history, social narratives, literature and culture.

Equally eclectic is Jackson’s use of media; oil, collage, pencil, wax crayon, etching, photoprints and bronze, along with poetry and prose. The show is both a visual feast and a reminder of how precious the natural world is.

As you enter the gallery, you are confronted with the huge mixed-media work Oak Tree of Life. The incorporated text speaks of the creatures, organisms and plant life the tree harbours and sustains; moths, beetles and lichens.

The central gallery area houses three large works, the space within the area and around the individual works allowing their power to speak.

Civil War Oak (mixed media) and The 350th or 400th Cornish Spring are both witnesses to history. The third piece, Our Shared History, a hyper-realistic work, isolates a section of an oak trunk – gnarled, pitted and cratered – concentrating on its physicality and materiality.

The work includes hand-written text speaking of the historical narratives and cultural significance of individual oaks all over the country.

Hung as a panel along the back wall are seven square mixed-media works. Each features a single oak, emphasising its architecture, along with its geographical location and historical importance. Another panel of smaller works shows six individual oaks, some fallen, roots exposed; two include human elements – cars, signs, and glinting night lights.

A composite work of wax-crayon drawings looks at Blenheim’s veteran oaks. There’s a pleasing group of three formally arranged works; a black and white etching concerned with the veined structure of individual oak leaves; a pencil work of single acorn cups showing their interior and exterior qualities; and a display of October acorns in varying stages of growth and colour.

Memorial, Dead Alive features a single decaying oak, still imposing and magnificent as it dies and replenishes the earth.

The starkest of the works, and one of the most pleasing, is Gwedhen. A sole, bare, winter oak on the horizon is almost dwarfed by the dominant painted, scraped and daubed foreground, in saturated browns and blacks.

Recalling Van Gogh’s chair, The Oak of Nansmellyn refers to the domestic sphere, so sits rather uncomfortably with the rest of the show.

Jackson also shows sketchbooks and sculpture – Balance, two oak boughs hung together laterally – as well as oak-themed jewellery and ceramics, and a short film showing the artist painting a Cornish thorn bush throughout the seasons; an insight into his creative process.

And one to make you smile. Oak Eyes is a quirky formal arrangement of two columns of spectacles on oak rectangles, placed so that the wood knots have become ‘eyes’.

Open (Wednesday-Sunday 10am-4pm). Book a time slot. Full-price tickets £8.25; concessions available.