ONCA

Welcome to ONCA: One Network for Conservation and the Arts. The ONCA Gallery – home of the ONCA Trust – is a growing hub for art, ecology and education. Unique in the UK, we organise, host and curate art exhibitions and events that initiate conversations about the changing environment and raise awareness for frontline conservation projects. [email protected]

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Centre for Arts & Ecology

weekly blog is up!

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Crystallized books capture beauty of their demiseWhether it’s the steady decline of bookstores or the countless boxes of used books languishing on yard sale tables, evidence of the descent of the printed book is everywhere. While the information found in books lives on in a digital realm, the physical presence of books is becoming increasingly obsolete. Inspired by this uncertain future, San Francisco-based artist Alexis Arnold decided to explore other ways of preserving their material legacy in her series “Crystallized Books.”

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Our Christmas star was designed and made by a student at Moulsecoomb primary school! He used the inside of egg boxes and bottles' bottoms. His finishing touch were the colourful matches inside!

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One of our little hanging snowflakes!

All you have to do is cut the bottom of a bottle (carefully!) and paint it! 

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A detail from our winter window display...

These birds were made with milk bottles - two incisions was all that was needed!

With the little miscellaneous plastic in their bellies, these birds reference the known image of birds dying from ingesting plastic. 

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Our winter display is done! Come check out the decorations on the eggbox tree made by the Moulsecoomb Environmental Arts Club!

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This is the first humument, named after Tom Philips’ A Humument: a found form where a new poem is created from a pre-existing text. While Sea Dragon sails the Atlantic, I will write a humument for each member of the crew. A bit like a letter. Fourteen Letters for Fourteen Women At Sea. Going out to Lanzarote to meet them was something I knew I should do: now as I create the work, knowing them a little, having met them on the brink of a life changing experience, brings a depth I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. I’ve not decided whether to reveal the recipient, or to play with clues. The personal always floats to the surface in my work, in one way, shape or form. I’ll also be keeping plastics, pollution and the sea in the picture as part of this endeavour is to work out how to write about ecological issues through hybrid poetic forms. So letter + humument + 14 = sonnet. Perhaps. My source text is The Science of Life a three volume encyclopaedia from circa the mid-1930s by H G Wells, Julian Huxley and GP Wells. Quite a wonderful book in its own right.

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Our Creative Producer, Persephone, working on a passenger pigeon sculpture for the Remembrance Day for Lost Species this coming Sunday. 

Join us on our walk to celebrate and honour the pigeon's life. 

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To the Trees: A Changing of Home

Currently here at the ONCA gallery we are showing Jennifer Hooper's amazing solo exhibition To the Trees: A Changing of Home. The work showcased was created during, and as a response to, Hooper's residency with the organisation Comunidad Inti Wara Yassi (CIWY) in Bolivia.

CIWY is a Bolivian organisation which works towards creating a safe and healthy habitat for animals that due to human interference, can no longer live in the wild. The animals in the three CIWY habitats have been rescued from trafficking or life in circuses and zoos.

Jennifer first encountered CIWY when she was travelling in Bolivia in 2004. Although she only worked with the organisation, and the animals, for a few weeks, the experience had a profound impact on her, and has affected and guided her artistic work ever since;

“The privilege of working with the animals was magical and at times terrifying, an experience both removed from anything I had done before and yet familiar.”

Back to the jungle

In 2012 Jennifer met ONCA founder Laura Coleman and the two of them discovered that they had a mutual love of CIWY. As it happens, it was Laura's chance encounter with the organisation back in 2007 which had led to the foundation of ONCA in the first place.

Laura Coleman, now a trustee of CIWY, was determined to promote the Artist in Residence programme with the organisation and the two of them started working towards sending Jennifer back to the jungle. After a successful kickstarter campaign Jennifer sat foot in the Bolivian jungle once again in 2013.

Juancho

During her stay Jennifer formed a strong connection with especially one of the animals, Juancho, a one-eyed jaguar;

“I was moved by the fact that despite his traumatic life prior to coming to the refuge he had such a trusting nature. CIWY offers animals like Juancho a second chance at a content and more natural existence."

A big part of the exhibition is a series of intimate portraits of Juancho. With portraits such as these Jennifer lets us explore the personality of the animal, which deepens our understanding of why we need to ensure the well being of these beautiful creatures.

In her exhibition Jennifer also wants to expose the sharp contrasts between the beauty and natural wealth of the jungle with the devastating realities of the continuous deforestation.

After nine weeks Jennifer climbed back out of the jungle and after showcasing some of her work in the Kiosko gallery (Santa Cruz, Bolivia) she returned to the UK to finalise the pieces, which you can now experience here at the ONCA gallery. An experience which Jennifer hopes will increase our awareness of the issues taking place in the Bolivian jungle. Issues which effects us all. Even on the south coast of England.  

To the Trees: A Changing of Home ends October 12th.

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By Katie Henery

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By Katie Henery

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