“A tree is never only a tree”: Arborealists bring Christmas show to Hackney Road

Twenty-eight artists are asking why we fell a young conifer every December, carry it indoors and hang lights on it, in an exhibition arriving on Hackney Road in the run-up to Christmas.

All Trees Are Political: Particularly at Christmas, curated by Margate artist Philippa Beale, will be at the Batsford Gallery from Friday 11 to Sunday 20 December, following its opening in Margate during National Tree Week.

The show brings together the Arborealists, a collective of artists who take the tree as their subject, with a group of invited artists. Admission is free and every work is for sale, with prices starting at under £300.

Older than religion

The exhibition traces the Christmas tree back through the long practice of bringing greenery indoors during the darkest months. It sets the fir and spruce of Germanic and solstice tradition, and the holly and ivy of homes and churches, alongside Tu BiShvat, the Jewish New Year for Trees, and tulsi, the holy basil kept at the centre of Hindu homes.

Beale argues that the instinct behind all of them is older than any single faith, and that a tree is never only a tree but also land, memory, faith and power. That, she says, is what makes it political.

“We bring trees indoors in the darkest month because something in us needs them close,” she said. “That instinct is older than any of our religions and shared by all of them. Twenty-eight artists have each followed it somewhere I did not expect.”

A willow on the roof

The exhibition image is Annabel Cullen’s lithograph Remnant, Oaks Park (1).

Surrey painter Georgina Allen, who won first prize in Rye Art Gallery’s En Plein Air competition last year, shows Wimbledon Common, while Robert Amesbury Brooks, who was taught by Euan Uglow at the Slade, shows Trees at Throop.

Frank Creber’s contribution is a painting of a willow that came down on a house and stopped just short of catastrophe, raising the question of who is responsible for the risks we have learned to live with.

Searching for Eden

Beale’s own route into the subject began in Gibraltar. While curating the exhibition Traces of Humanity there and in Margate earlier this year, she worked with Professor Geraldine Finlayson, who with her husband Professor Clive Finlayson has led excavations at Gorham’s Cave Complex, the Neanderthal site given UNESCO World Heritage status in 2016.

Describing the people who once lived there, Beale said: “Families walking together, with trees of every kind in view. We have an innate inclination to keep searching for Eden. The artists in this show are recreating it through their art.”

Back on Hackney Road

The Arborealists were founded in 2013 by the painter Tim Craven, for many years a curator at Southampton City Art Gallery. Their 2024 exhibition at the Batsford Gallery launched Beale’s book Forests, Woods and Groves: Art from the Arborealists, which was longlisted for the 2025 Wainwright Prize for Illustrative Books.

The Hackney Road run includes a private view on Saturday 12 December from 2pm to 5pm, and Beale will give her talk Being with Trees: 45 exhibitions in 13 years at 3pm on Saturday 19 December.

Beale’s book is on sale at the gallery alongside Art Meets Ecology: Arborealists in Lady Park Wood and a catalogue of this year’s Arborealists exhibition at the Minories in Colchester.

All Trees Are Political: Particularly at Christmas is at the Batsford Gallery, 266 Hackney Road, E2 7SJ, from Friday 11 to Sunday 20 December. Open Friday to Sunday, 12pm to 5pm. Admission free.