Dear Nature- John Newling

In 2018 artist John Newling spent 81 consecutive days writing letters to Nature. The letters echo the sentiment of a series of letters to a loved one but with a voice of humanity attempting to come to terms with its relationship to nature.

The letters take you on a journey through the history of agriculture, economics, religion and capitalism to the present day. Newling describes the values that have underpinned human endeavour and shaped our world. Dear Nature describes that which all humans with a conscience, deep down, must feel right now about nature. The book offers a new state of mind for the future, rooted in balance and respect.

Newling has produced Soil Books (2019), made with soil from his garden to embody the idea of the Anthropocene, our current geological age in which human impact is evident. He is determined to grasp “what is it to know that we have affected the effects of nature/our environment… you can trace our evolution to a point where we subdued nature, but to our own cost, because we will make ourselves extinct”.

The Soil Books are sculptures, derived from Newling’s everyday experience of walking from his house into his back garden, picking up leaves on the way: “It’s like a ritual, so that every leaf in those books – the language of the books – is from my garden.” The result is book-like stacks of panels of processed soil with the leaves, pressed and gilded, on the surfaces which are then stained with watercolour. The order of the books is crucial, indicating seasonal change, and once again conveying the artist’s preoccupation with physical transformation.

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