Rebecca Byrne
Wild Land
17 May to 21 June 2025
Opening: Saturday 17 May 3 - 8pm
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” - Lewis Carol
SCHOOL is pleased to present Wild Land, an exhibition by Rebecca Byrne. Working with acrylic paint, chalk pastels and pencil, Byrneʼs paintings of imaginary landscapes are loaded with memory, acts of resilience and growth. Her trees, acting as a representation of time, are full of life, their organic forms feeling like they’re moving through the landscape rather than deeply rooted within it. Her use of pastels, which began during a residency in Orquevaux, France in 2022, offered both a freedom with her mark-making and a liberating feminist approach to making art. She explains: “Pastels have a reputation as a gendered and marginalised material, arguably viewed as low brow and a material for woman and children...Paula Rego talks of this, and how she viewed moving exclusively into this medium as a most feminist thing to do - a rebellion in pastel.” Wild Land consists of a series of pastel landscape paintings alongside a new large scale wall drawing made specifically for this exhibition.
The trees in Byrneʼs paintings also act as a form of self-portraiture, a reflection of the artist realised in vivid surreal high definition. The trees include references to Bristlecone Pine Trees, the oldest known trees in the world, as well as Plane Trees that the artist encounters whilst on walks in Victoria Park. She says, “Planes are the most amazing trees in London, with these peeling, drippy trunks that look like bodies, and they often lean towards each other as if in conversation.” Byrne allows us to move from nature and fall into a fantastical world, a wild land.
Rebecca Byrne is an American artist and curator who lives and works in London. In 2012 she completed a Masters in Fine Art from at Chelsea College of Art and Design. Byrne then co-founded PaintUnion in 2012, a discussion group for artists around ideas in contemporary painting, she also co-ran PIY PaintLounge at Sluice Biennial in 2017. She was commissioned to create new work by the arts mental health charity Hospital Rooms for a project at Ipswich NHS and by mental health non-profit Live More for an installation at St. Charles NHS, Psychiatric Intensive Care Units, London.
Wild Lands follows Byrne’s second solo show after Room, at The Van GoghGalerie, Netherlands (2017); both shows include site specific work, a consistent thread in her practice. Recent group exhibitions include Digital Art School, Hauser & Wirth, London, UK (2025); Holding Space, Hauser & Wirth, London, UK (2024); An eXhibition of SMALL things with BIG ideas, White Conduit Projects, London, UK (2022-2023); Carry-On Baggage, Galeria Augustine, Lisbon, Portugal (2022-2023); Like there is hope and I can dream of another world, Hauser & Wirth, London, UK (2022); New Mythologies, OHSH Projects, London (2022); STILL LIFE / LIFE STILL, OHSH Projects, London (2022); Stop Look Listen Feel, Platform Projects (2019); The Florence Trust Residency Show, St. Saviours Church, London (2018); IN QUOTES, Gerald Moore Gallery, London (2018); Control to Collapse, Blyth Gallery (co-curated), London (2017); PIY PaintLounge, Sluice Biennial 2017, London (2017) and The Creekside Open 2017, Prizewinner, selected by Alison Wilding, RA, A.P.T. Gallery, London (2017).
Byrneʼs work is in private collections in the US, UK, Europe and Canada, as well as in the Vincent Van Gogh Huis Museum and Hogan Lovells Collections.